Why Stop Now movie review & film summary (2012)

Amazingly, she can't be admitted. She's been clean for a few days in preparation, her urine shows no drugs, but her insurance won't cover a "voluntary admission." A helpful counselor advises her to leave, get high and try again.

Eli has been having butterflies and panic attacks all day. Penny has apparently been using for years, creating chaos in his life, even though she's been a sweet mother to him and his little sister, whose closest relationship is with a smelly sock puppet. Melissa Leo ("Frozen River") fits comfortably in these careworn roles; her Penny tries hard but is scattered and jumpy.

Eli thinks it through and advises his mom to do some coke. She doesn't have any. This makes necessary a visit to her drug dealer Sprinkles (Tracy Morgan, of "30 Rock"), who lives with his mother and his sidekick Black (Isiah Whitlock Jr.). They, alas, have no stock on hand. Now Eli, who speaks Spanish, finds himself as the translator between Sprinkles and Eduardo (Paul Calderon), his Puerto Rican source, which involves a rendezvous in a restaurant and another at a birthday party for Eduardo's daughter. Eduardo, by the way, falls in love with Penny on the spot.

I can imagine this material being hurtled through at breakneck speed. Not here. The co-writers and directors, Philip Dorling and Ron Nyswaner, have a good feeling for characters and pacing. The drug dealers, for example, aren't rubber-stamp movie "drug dealers" but plausible people with real lives and feelings. Time is given and attention paid to the construction of scenes, so that the humor grows from the situations and doesn't pound us on the head. Consider how the daughter's birthday party is handled, and the grace with which Penny dances with the guy who likes her and feels flattered.