The biggest compliment I can give Rebecca Miller’s (The Ballad of Jack and Rose, Maggie’s Plan) unmemorable She Came To Me was that it was creative. I crave originality. While none of the singular components were necessarily imaginative, the sum of the parts brought a freshness that kept me engaged. Unfortunately, I left feeling uninspired and disappointed as Miller dipped in and out of genres. Pegged as a romantic dramedy, I never felt involved enough with the characters to take the film seriously. Likewise, the comedy was a miss for me, though I heard some chuckling from the other ten or so people in my theater. And, while the film centered around intimate relationships at its core, this was far from checking off the romance genre checkbox. In all, it was pretty messy as it crawled towards a predictable finish line, misusing the talents of three of Hollywood’s biggest names in the process.

Peter Dinklage (Cyrano, HBO’s Game of Thrones) stars as Steven, an anxious, irritable opera composer whose writer’s block has turned into a multi-year depression since his last hit, aware that another failure could end his illustrious career. During his funk, he married his therapist, Patricia (Anne Hathaway – Rachel Getting Married, Love & Other Drugs), a highly-wound, hypochondriacal micromanager who makes all of the couple’s decisions. Their marriage has never quite evolved from a patient-therapist dynamic, with Steven still referring to Patricia as “Doc” and her suggestions for what he should do with his days to go out of his routine.

Unfulfilled, Steven spends his days unsuccessfully trying to write. As his depression worsens, he struggles with making even the most basic life decisions. Patricia will send him outside their Brooklyn, New York City home just to get him out of the house (and her way), exercise, and enjoy the fresh air. But, even then, he allows his dog to lead him in which direction the walks will lead him. On one particular walk, he stumbles into a local bar to get a drink. He is approached by Katrina (Marisa Tomei – The Wrestler, The King of Staten Island), a rough-on-exterior tugboat captain from New Orleans. We learn that she is addicted to love/romance (Bruce Springsteen wrote a song for the film called “Addicted To Romance”).

Soon, Steven and Katrina end up on Katrina’s tugboat and have a one-night stand. However, there is not much guilt on either party’s part. Instead, Steven is motivated to write his next opera, which he does in record time, using Katrina, the tugboat, and their brief relationship as the basis. Yet, despite landing one of the best opera singers in the city, Steven struggles because this stage actor is not Katrina. He wants the part to be Katrina and not a variation of her.

There is a substory to the film involving Patricia’s son/Steven’s stepson, which is cute but unneeded. It feels like this part of the story exists because the story between Patricia, Steven, and Katrina isn’t enough to carry the movie to reach a full-length feature’s acceptable runtime. Nevertheless, it gives She Came To Me a little hope and charm. Julian (Evan Ellison), Patricia’s son from her deceased first husband, is ready for his high school career so he can begin to make his mark on the world. The 18-year-old is romantically involved with 16-year-old Tereza (Harlow Jane – Dig). Tereza is the daughter of Patricia and Steven’s immigrant housekeeper, Magdalena (Ida, Cold War), though the parents only learn of this development when we do as an audience. In a film that is full of unlikeable adults, (which includes Tereza’s stepdad, Trey (Brian d’Arcy James –First Man, Molly’s Game), a court stenographer and wannabe law enforcement officer, whose main passion is the participation in the reenactment of Civil War battles in the greater New York area), Julian and Tereza’s innocence, optimism, and hopefulness separate them the two rootable characters. With their story feeling as if it isn’t needed to complete the film, I wondered if there was even a reason for this film to exist as the movie neared its conclusion.