Reviewed by David Levinson

EVERY YEAR parental-advice columnist Dan Burns (Steve Carell) migrates North to Rhode Island with his three daughters in tow, where they take part in a family get-together at their grandparents’ lakeside home.

Back in New Jersey though, Dan is left (thanks to the loss of his wife four years prior) unattended in the threatening landscape of the opposite sex – one prone to stony coups of silence; tectonic hormonal-shifts; and the sudden emergence of skimpy underwear atop the family washing pile. In the case of the latter, they belong to 15-year old Cara, contrary to Dan’s hopeful (and totally misguided) assumption that they’re 17-year old’s Jane’s; same goes for the boy who shows up to walk Cara to school, and who, vying to plug the welling threat of her sexuality, Dan warns she’s incapable of loving, given the nearsightedness of her age.