Ed Hemsler spends his life preparing for a disaster that may never come. Ronnie Meisner spends her life shopping for things she may never use. In a small. These two people will try to find love.
At first, you think Ed (Jon Lithgow), is just some pathetic man with OCD who lives alone, has no friends, maintains a perfectly organized home, records and files data about conspiracy theories and shops often for food and house supplies. Then you find out he’s just living his whole life in chat groups with others like him convinced that the world is going to end.
His life changes when he notices a woman named Ronnie (Blythe Danner) in the grocery store. He watches her closely, noticing that she carefully chooses certain items and only uses cash which leads him to believe that she is one of the informed people such as himself. He is intrigued so he introduces himself the next time he sees her and from then on they become friends. After weeks of spending time together, Ed begins to really fall for her. He reveals his biggest secret, which is his garage packed with years of food and survival items that he has been saving for the disaster.
When Ronnie invites Ed over for the first time, he discovers she is not the person he thought she was. He assumed she was someone who was organized and clean, knew about all the terrible things going on in the world and was preparing for it. Instead, her house is a complete disaster, she hoards everything she has ever owned and doesn’t really believe that anything bad is going to happen.
Disappointed that Ronnie turned out to be other than what he expected, he suggests a garage sale in hopes that she will be motivated to clean her home. Ronnie refuses to change and tells Ed that she is happy with her life and he should live in the moment and stop worrying about tomorrow. At the end of the film, Ed does take her advice and has his own garage sale, getting rid of all of the things he purchased over the years preparing for something disastrous. Ronnie shows up at his sale to make up and as people come by to shop, all of a sudden there is a huge explosion. So was Ed right? Did the world really end? Who knows, I guess we could only assume.
I thought this film was cute! I love John Lithgow and Blythe Danner together and the message of accepting others for who they really are, instead of who you think they are, resonated with me. Also through falling in love, he learns to enjoy what he has now and stop focusing on something that may never happen. I wish there was a better ending than this big explosion, leaving us guessing if that was just a metaphor or was he right all along. Terrible choice but that doesn’t take away from the rest of the film. It was actually an enjoyable story.
In select theaters Wednesday, May 22nd
