There’s a point in this movie where Annette Bening stumbles upon Joni Mitchell’s "Blue" in Mark Ruffalo’s record collection.

This is something we’ve lost in the MP3 era.  Not only the ability to scan through a person’s record collection and make a judgment as to their taste and whether or not you’ll connect, but the concept that music collections are limited, hand-curated with loving care.  Vinyl records were like the Torah.  Rare and cherished.

But those days are gone.

But the music lives on.  When Mark and Annette start going through the song titles and singing "All I Want" there’s a certain constituency that starts to smile both inside and out.  I’m a member of that club.

I’ve wanted to see "The Kids Are All Right" all summer.  But like most movies, I was convinced I’d wait for video and if I was lucky watch it on HBO, but probably not at all.  There’s just too much out there.  I feel like I live in a tsunami of art and information.  I have to hold my hands over my head to protect myself.  One more unsolicited MP3 from a wannabe and I’m gonna be crushed.  Don’t they understand I don’t have time for my own life, never mind theirs?

But when I woke up after 11, having gone to bed around 3, Monica was standing in the living room, Felice said she wanted to see "The Kids Are All Right" at the ArcLight at 12:10, was I in?

That’s how I like to live my life.  On impulse.  Ask me to make a commitment for next Tuesday and you’ll get a noncommittal response.  Ask me if I want to do something right now, with the window of opportunity closing as we speak, and odds are I’ll say yes.  So I agreed to go to the movie with Felice and Monica.

We bought our tickets ahead of time, but this was unnecessary.

We saw a promo for the new Davis Guggenheim movie about education.  Seemed interesting, but I couldn’t help but think of what I read in "Newsweek" just before going to bed…  The problem isn’t teacher/student ratio, not even money, but student motivation.  Then again, the trailer for Guggenheim’s movie stated that U.S. students were down the leaderboard in math, but number one in confidence!

Then the movie began.

It was so much better than I expected.  It was as good as I wanted it to be.  And that’s so rare.  With the plethora of art extant today comes endless disappointment.  Despite the hype, almost nothing’s that good.

Then again, what is that thing?

Movies are two-dimensional.  Even if they’re in 3-D.  It’s not about character development or humanity so much as production values and special effects.

But in this movie I believed Annette Bening was a lesbian.  And her relationship with Julianne Moore paralleled experiences I’ve had.

But I’ve never had a family.  I felt like I was peering behind a door into a room I’d never be able to enter.  I felt nostalgic for a life I never had.

Maybe like Mark Ruffalo.  He was the sperm donor for Annette and Julianne’s two kids.  And now their eighteen year old has tracked him down.

There’s so much right in this movie.  The arguing.  The laughs.  The human connection.  The intimacy driven by impulse.  After all, we’re mortal.  Computers can’t tell us what music we’ll like and they can’t determine who we’ll love.  You can delineate your type ad infinitum, but then you’re in the presence of another human being and you’re drawn to them, you can’t keep your hands off them.

This is the kind of movie that made me move to California. Where it’s always sunny and there’s endless opportunity.  Where you can live the dream inside your heart.  Mark can be restaurateur.  He can feel fine about dropping out of college.  He doesn’t need to justify himself, he can just be.

That’s not how it is on the east coast where I grew up.  If you didn’t go to college, never mind an Ivy, you’re no longer on the fast track.  You can make money, but a certain part of the population will always look down its nose at you, will never let you into their club.

But in California, it’s a giant club of people living their lives, with hopes and dreams, trying to do better, but satisfied where they are.

Don’t believe the hype.  The Lindsay Lohan/TMZ world is not real.  That’s just entertainment.  About as truthful as those endless extravaganzas that open every weekend at the multiplex.

We live, we die.  We laugh, we cry.  We do our best, but fail anyway.

Life is imperfect.  But we soldier on.

If you’ve spent nights lying on your bed listening to Joni Mitchell, dreaming of the perfect love and wondering if you’ll ever find him or her, this movie is for you.

Assuming you’re old enough to have listened to Joni in real time, when the albums first came out.  And are now so aged that you know that life is complicated, that it never works out the way you planned.

Mark Ruffalo was in my favorite movie of the twenty first century, "You Can Count On Me".  "The Kids Are All Right" is not quite as good.  But it comes from the same place.  One where you follow the prescribed line, but jump the tracks now and again, get yourself in trouble, and know that life’s messy.  Only by getting yourself dirty can you live it to the fullest.