There is going to be a movie adaptation of Jonathan Tropper's novel This Is Where I Leave You. I picked that book up at random a couple of years ago and found myself laughing out loud at the dialogue and the narrator's inner monologue. This was not the kind of laughing out loud that is expressed with a simple "lol" and a crying-laughing emoji. This was the kind of laughter that startles and annoys everyone around you, but is totally worth it. The book is about an extremely dysfunctional family, and the dysfunction is -usually- played for laughs. Narrator Judd Foxman returns to his childhood home to fulfill his father's dying wish; the patriarch wanted his children and wife to sit shiva for him. While the family was never particularly in touch with their religion and its practices, they oblige. Sibling rivalries re-surface, relationships go awry, and it is proven again and again that families are strange and complex and exhausting- but also really, really great. It is like The Royal Tenenbaums meets Eulogy meets Crazy, Stupid, Love.
So not only will this movie be hilarious (Tropper wrote the screenplay!), it also looks really well-cast. Adam Driver and Tina Fey look especially close to the way I imagined their characters. Add in the fact that they -and the rest of the cast- are very talented, and this should be a pretty great movie.
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