The discomfiting “Grace is Gone” strikes me two ways: big-hearted and wet-noodley. While John Cusack, as producer and star, playing the clueless conservative father of two daughters whom he takes on a cockeyed caravan from their Minnesota home to an apocryphal Florida amusement park to postpone telling them their mother is the latest casualty in the Iraq occupation, conveys a wet-eyed humanity, writer-director James Strouse’s script leaves a taste of contrivance and dishonesty that evades rather than embodies its key concerns. He doesn’t tell his kids right away? Set up an hour and a half of muttering the words “fuckin’ asshole” under your breath. There are at least three composite pitches battling for screen-time here: “Little Miss Bummer,” “Crash Is Back” and “National Lampoon’s Iraq Occupation Vacation.” Strouse has little directorial panache, either. With Shélan O’Keefe, Gracie Bednarczyk and Alessandro Nivola. 94m. (Ray Pride)
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