Hot Air

Sheldon Nylander: With cookie-cutter characters that stumble and trip their way through a cliched plot (tell me if you've heard this one: Smart and spunky teenager shows up on the doorstep of a stuffy conservative family member and makes them look inward for a better way to be), "Hot Air" is not insightful nor is it even that timely. The characters are not relatable to the point of being reprehensible and feel like they lurch their way along like emotional Frankenstein's monsters in difficult or impossible to believe directions with little tangible and no believable character development. The only character that seems to derive any relatability is the teenage niece, Tess, but even she doesn't demonstrate much depth and can be very irritating. Steve Coogan's long-winded speech near the end seems to come out of nowhere with less provocation than he would have clearly had in the past. Overall, you'll probably feel the same way if you just walk repeatedly into a closed door for a little while futily hoping to get to the other side, and you won't waste 100 minutes doing it.