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When new kid in town Ed Wallis is given an assignment to interview an older person, he turns to his mysterious neighbor, Ashby Holt for help. That new connection leads to unexpected journeys for both of them, as Ashby - who turns out to be a retired CIA assassin - deals with a terminal prognosis, and Ed deals with adjusting to life with his newly single mom and developing relationship with a brainy classmate, Eloise.
It's a quirky life-lessons setup that, while occasionally earning deadpan laughs, tries for but never achieves Wes Anderson's patented mixture of the archly witty and the sneakily emotional.
Folks buying a ticket to Ashby hoping to see a film about the late-great director of Being There and Harold and Maude are about to be sorely disappointed. So is everyone else.
It's a comedy afraid of being too funny lest its macho sentimentality seem even more ridiculous than it is, and a drama afraid of appearing too serious lest you dismiss it as hogwash.
Women can't teach boys to become men, so the reformed assassin has become the potential (movie) ticket to seeing a satisfactorily performed forging of a boy into a real man.