Starring Susan Sarandon. Rating unavailable

A woman still living on the fortune and residual love of her late husband begins to feel trapped in her pleasant Los Angeles home, especially when starting to lose connection to her increasingly absent daughter. But can she overcome her habitual ways in order to let a roguish older gentleman into her life?

Wait a minute! I’m describing last year’s I’ll See You in My Dreams, with Blythe Danner as the bored widow, Malin Akerman as the daughter, and Sam Elliott as the grizzled suitor. The Meddler plays an almost identical story for comedy, substituting sitcom developments for the earlier film’s thoughtfully crafted characterizations. But not all the changes are bad.

Here, Susan Sarandon is frequently funny and sometimes touching as the title character, Marnie Minervini, a New Jersey widow who moved west to be near daughter Lori (Rose Byrne), a struggling screenwriter and experienced mom-avoider. As Marnie drives around town, looking for things to do and people to bother—there are several pointless subplots in this vein—she leaves a steady stream of unrequited messages on Lori’s phone. Marnie starts most of her mobile diary entries with “Anyway…”, her passive-aggressive equivalent of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie’s Maggie Smith saying “It’s only me” whenever entering a room.

When Lori heads to New York to work on a pilot, Mom has even more free time on her hands. In one of The Meddler’s more charming moments, Marnie wanders onto a film set and becomes an instant extra. This introduces her to the gruff security dude played by Whiplasher J.K. Simmons, channelling Sam Elliott so hard I thought he was trying to sell her a Ram-tough truck.

Writer-director Lorene Scafaria reportedly drew on her relationship with her own mother for this (notably Anglo-cast) effort, which struggles to find the right balance of amused detachment and deeper exploration of family dynamics. As in her debut feature, Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, the result is about halfway there. In this case, though, the other half stars Blythe Danner.