A very important film that is as sad as it is uplifting. After viewing it you may just have a whole new appreciation for life.

Has such quiet power that it is actually not depressing, and the cast follows suit with Dukakis, Carver and Posey, rising to the occasion.

Writer-director Thom Fitzgerald -- his previous feature was "The Hanging Garden" -- has managed to make a comedy about assisted suicide that hardly feels black at all.

There's a lot of talent on display here: Dukakis has never been better and once again Fitzgerald proves himself to be a filmmaker of unfailing sensitivity, capable of transforming what could have been distastefully flip or overly lachrymose into something humorous but deeply heartfelt.

Aggressively drab and granular, the movie feels like a late-'80s AIDS passion play given an ill-fitting post-Sept. 11 makeover.

It's a movie about a nice guy with a lot of friends who dies. It's not really about the wider tragedy the film aspires to represent.

Just sit, feel a little blue and watch Parker Posey wander through New York in an ugly conservative suit. In "Blade," at least she'll get a snazzier wardrobe.

Intelligent, moving, but annoyingly self-satisfied.

Other than the terribly miscast Posey, the cast is solid, with Dukakis wrenching the heart as a mother tested to the max by her son's request. But the movie didn't tell me anything I didn't already know.

A good edit would have allowed the film's worthy, obviously heartfelt, message to shine.

A dawdling affair that never finds its own rhythm. Early on, it gets lost in its own earnestness and never finds its way back.

Middling drama about euthanasia, worked out through a sprawl of underdeveloped characters.

The topic is thought-provoking, the flashback-based structure is interesting, and there are surprising twists near the end. But there's also an overdose of sentimentality that badly dilutes the picture's impact.

Dukakis gets off some of the film's best lines and keeps the worst from sinking the whole affair; Polley's role is limited, but her character's audition for a feminine hygiene commercial is by far the best thing here.