The story presents a wide range of events that we experience through a young man named Reggie, a 12-year-old man living in a castle in Manhattan. Reggie is a young man surrounded by wealth but living a lonely life where his parents miss a lot and for long periods of time. On the other hand, the girl called Eleanor is a young musical girl who is always in pain and is separated from the family. She is facing the problems of her exhausted boyfriend, who seems to be still alone. Eleanor is dismissed from her job as a waitress, making things worse.
Whaley nicely calibrates this wistful dramedy's emotional quotient, never allowing sentiment to turn into sap. He also smartly dials down Reggie's initial precociousness to reveal a kid who's deep, resourceful and strangely sensible.
Perhaps the best picture Whaley has made to date, able to find purpose and meaning in this friendship, disrupting a formulaic structure with an earnest appreciation of personality.
Gossip Girl royalty Meester does opposite side of the tracks raw and real here, when it comes to emotional domestic violence, economic class divisions and youth financial struggles today. But the incessant background music is this film's own worst enemy.
It's a bittersweet story that thins out toward the end as it turns too obviously sentimental, but it's still a nicely etched tale of the intersection of two unrelated lives.
Unsurprising given its laughably affected title, Like Sunday, Like Rain boasts what may be the most insufferably precocious protagonist in cinema history.
