Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

It's a year since Sarah (Olivia Wilde) and Philip (Luke Wilson) lost their son Jessie who disappeared after going to a gas station bathroom. She's a teacher in NYC and he's a policeman. She becomes obsessed with the outcast special-needs student Adam and his foster parents (Elisabeth Moss, Kevin Corrigan). Philip's screw-up brother Tim (Giovanni Ribisi) is staying with them. Philip is going to a support group. Sarah insists that Jessie is alive and is spiraling downwards.Olivia Wilde delivers a quietly devastating performance. Her obsession with Adam is compelling. Philip deserves to have someone to concentrate his lost on just like Sarah. He seems to have a scattering of characters to interact with. He's a cop which should be easy for him to fixate on one victim. His side of the story isn't as compelling. This is Wilde's movie and she delivers.

Those who didn't like the ending, or said it left them hanging, just didn't get it.First off, I think the movie was, most importantly, REAL. It was how real people, in the real world cope, not Hollywood people, or how Hollywood THINKS real people would. The real world is ugly, dirty, and selfish, but can also be beautiful, innocent, and full of wonder if you look at all of it and don't just focus on the negative. Its about a couple falling apart and doing things they normally would not do. With her the cutting, having sex with a stranger, smoking DMT, and listening to metal. Him, using his pull as a cop to find his meeting friend's daughter's killer's address. The loser brother-in-law whose life is a mess (doesn't everyone family have someone like this?). As for the ending, she promised to take him to Africa to see the elephants, but instead actually ends up finding him an elephant! And by doing so, she looks into the elephant's eyes and realizes that she lost her baby too. They lock eyes in mutual pain, loss, grieving, understanding. In that moment, she is able to connect with another mother who understands what it is like to lose a child. So he has his meetings, she got an elephant. What more do you want from an ending? Want to see if they let her adopt the kid? If she went back to teaching? She still is going to need a LOT of work, either years of therapy or group, an elephant can't fix broken. But anyway, who cares? That would be the boring part. May as well leave it on a high note.

Meadowlands is outstanding on many levels. It had a risk of being unbalanced and overly melodramatic or otherwise missing the point of the reality of what the film -through the writer- intended to convey which was the story of people who do go through this reality. While it had flaws if you looked hard for them, what stood out was what could be attributed to the direction, sound score, cinematic filming, and balanced overall presentation of the story. The actors all did what really talented actors can do. It was a very well done and worth seeing film. (Well, need more lines to submit review.) Regarding two things worth mentioning, The camera work was with a very fast lens and the ending scene was outstanding in how it brought the story to a conclusion.

I suppose the reason most movies are so instantly forgettable is because, like the popcorn we shovel into our mouths distractedly while watching them, most movies are just bland, uninspiring, and only temporarily filling. They take few risks, break no new ground, and therefore leave us as we were when we entered the theater: hungry for something more substantial and memorable. Well, much admired cinematographer Reed Morano's first turn in the Director's chair, the haunting, visceral and formula shattering "Meadowland," which I caught at the Tribeca Film Festival last weekend, is simply unforgettable and searing. It burns its way into your memory, taking you on an ever-escalating trip through the unraveling of the world of parents unable to get any closure over a missing child who vanishes without a trace or clue, leaving the parents frozen in the time of the disappearance, immobilized yet stumbling through the mundane as they spend their days in a daze of incomplete, inchoate grief.How do you mourn someone who is not dead but simply unaccounted for? In the hands of a less sensitive and brave director and cast, such a story would, at various times, turn melodramatic or maudlin, but Morano and her superb cast, led by Olivia Wilde, stay with the pace at which life honestly moves when grief is the gnawing feeling you wake up with every day. You live, but your life is lifeless, and every day their son stays missing is a little less a day for hope. Wilde gets progressively gaunt and hollowed with the passage of time, and she delivers a disciplined performance of aching realism, never giving in to the temptation to play Sarah broadly or with hand-wringing sympathy. Sarah's husband Phil, played by Luke Wilson in the equally defining role of his film career, is similarly staggered by his son's disappearance but falls down the rabbit hole of loss by a somewhat different route. While Sarah goes from lithium to lethargy, Phil goes for support from a group that includes John Leguizamo, superbly cast against his usual type, but Phil misunderstands the nature of support and loses a friend as he tries to take a shortcut in the twelve steps to rehabilitation. Wilson's eyes rarely show signs of the life he had before his son went missing; even when he is dealing with a domestic dispute with potentially explosive consequences, he seems bored by the banality of daily life even as he urges Sarah to accept the reality of their loss.Morano clearly loves the actors with whom she works and gets career-defining performances from most of them, especially her two leads. Her dual role as cinematographer never seems to burden her. In fact, it may help to have the person actually behind the camera stand behind her actors. Her visuals are remarkably, even almost shockingly, bright and clear, from Sarah's yellow hoodie she wears when prowling the crowded city streets looking for her son to the clouds that hover over an otherwise dreary landscape of loss. Morano is a force to be reckoned with, and Meadowland is a film that celebrates her skills for story telling and her knack for getting the most out of her stars. Wilde and Wilson have never been better, but one senses Meadowland is just the beginning of even richer and deeper roles for both of them for a very long time. Meadowland is not without problems. The script tends to wander in the third act as if, like Sarah and Phil as they stumble through the fog of grief, not everyone is sure where things are ultimately headed. And let's be clear: this is not a subject matter that begs to be seen in a multiplex on a feel-good night out. But if film is indeed a window into our true selves, then Meadowland succeeds on every level because Morano, Wilde and Wilson are brave enough to tell a story without artifice and resolution. Much as we know, when we are truly honest with ourselves, that we have to live our lives without a story arc with a clear beginning, middle, and end, Meadowland honors the courage it takes just to keep living, especially when those who were so important that they were the center of those lives, cannot.