Bobby Cannavale, Rose Byrne, and Nick Kroll (Radius-TWC)

When I started to watch the online screener for Adult Beginners, I thought the viewing platform had slapped an ad on the product. A slimy, arrogant spokesman pitches a variety of Google Glasses to potential investors. This turns out to be Jake (Nick Kroll). He doesn’t have much exterior or interior appeal. Jake is schmoozing at a big launch party for a product in which he’s invested all of his own money as well as a lot of money from friends and acquaintances who think he knows what he’s doing.

The dream is short lived. Nick gets a call that his manufacturer fell through and the whole deal is off, losing Nick his own fortune as well as the life savings of his investors (though his coke-addled buddy Hudson (Joel McHale) seems unscathed, as he holds on to his huge New York loft). Jake retreats from Manhattan to his childhood home, where he moves in with his pregnant sister Justine (Rose Byrne, whom you cannot fathom is Nick Kroll’s sister), her husband Danny (Bobby Cannavale), and their son Teddy (credited to Caleb and Matthew Paddock, which I realize means that twins alternated in the role, but I like to think of them as one child with multiple personalities).

As soon as Jake arrives at his ancestral home, it’s clear that he hasn’t paid much attention to his family unless he needed something. Justine knows this about her brother, so when Jake tells them he needs a place to stay for a few months, she’s surprised that Danny is okay with it. Their marriage is troubled, too; his wife pays more attention to their son, so Danny is happy to have someone to get high with, and as Jake learns, his bro-in-law has been getting other attention on the side. The couple hires Jake to take care of their son, and laughter ensues when you see that the fallen venture capitalist can barely take care of himself, much less take care of a kid.

It may be a sit-com premise, but it’s a character-driven situation. Nick’s selfishness drives the plot. Staying at his sister’s, Jake can run in place and make the same mistakes he’s always made, but as his relationship with his family deepens, he develops something like compassion and responsibility.

The film’s title comes from a swimming pool where Nick and his sister take Teddy for swimming lessons. Perky swimming instructor Jane Krakowski awards the siblings the patronizing title of adult beginners, and as their struggles with adulthood make it clear, the pool is a plain but powerful metaphor for the feeling of drowning in adulthood.

Adult Beginners is a familiar tale of adults who aren’t very good at adulthood—who is? It’s so familiar that the movie has been compared unfavorably with The Skeleton Twins, with which it apparently shares plot points like the strained sibling relationship and even the swimming pool metaphor. I haven’t seen The Skeleton Twins, but after some initial eye-rolling I grew to appreciate Adult Beginners.

It may help that it’s produced by the Duplass brothers. I can picture Mark Duplass in the part of Jake, but Kroll is a better choice to make the character’s redemption come from as douchey a place as possible. Director Ross Katz gets good performances from his leads—Kroll in particular giving Nick enough humanity to make his character arc watchable and even moving. This is one of those rare instances where I like a movie more than the critical consensus. The movie won’t tell you anything you don’t already know; but sometimes there’s comfort in something familiar.

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Adult Beginners

Directed by Ross Katz
Written by Jeff Cox and Liz Flahive; story by Nick Kroll
With Nick Kroll, Rose Byrne, Bobby Cannavale, Joel McHale
Running time 90 minutes
Rated R for language and some drug use
Opens today at Angelika Pop-Up and AFI Silver