Ghostlight

Chicago character actor Keith Kupferer gives a solid lead performance as an emotionally volatile construction worker who is unexpectedly invited to join a local amateur production of Romeo and Juliet. Husband and wife filmmakers Kelly O'Sullivan and Alex Thompson find a cleverly new way to utilize the Bard's most oft-filmed play for their story. Kupferer's grieving blue-collar dad reaches a personal turning point as he discovers how the events of the play mirror his own life. Unfortunately, the way this gradual change unfolds is pretty clunky. It is not the fault of the actor, who heads up a strong cast featuring his real-life wife Tara Mallen and daughter Katherine Mallen Kupferer, as well as Triangle of Sadness breakout star Dolly De Leon; it's the underdeveloped screenplay. Unlike the best films about the transformative power of appearing in a theatrical production—from Jonathan Demme's American Playhouse production Who Am I This Time? to the Oscar-winning Shakespeare in Love—the rehearsal process shown here is so mockingly slight that it only succeeds in its mildly comedic depiction of community theater participants, hardly something that hasn't already been done many times in far better films. Narrative beats and character realizations occur at illogical times, and we're required to infer far too many things happening (and not happening) off-camera. Thus, Kupferer's character transformation never feels fully earned.