Forever Home

Norton (Home Stretch) misses the mark in this blend of emotional family saga and questionable crime cover-up set in seaside Ireland. Divorced English teacher Carol Crottie, 48, found second love with Declan Barry, the father of one of her students, 10 years ago. Declan’s early-onset dementia leads his two children­­—unhappily isolated Sally and greedy, self-serving Killian—to pack him off to a nursing home and sell his beloved house in fictional Ballytoor. Carol’s parents, owners of a successful café chain, use a shell company to secretly buy the house from Sally and Killian, but then Carol and her imposing mother, Moira, discover a body in a basement freezer. They assume it’s the corpse of Joan, Declan’s wife, who’d left suddenly years before. When Joan shows up and clearly knows more than she’s telling, Moira concocts a series of schemes to get to the truth and avoid alerting the police, ostensibly to spare Declan from charges he can’t defend. The family dramas, from Killian’s unease with becoming a father with his husband to Carol’s regression to adolescent frustration in the face of her parents’ steamrollering, are evocatively rendered, but the oddly downplayed central traumas clash with the mildly humorous tone. Despite its zany plot, this is more limp than madcap. (Sept.)