Best Staged Plans

Midlife craziness careens into a happy ending in this crowd-pleaser for empty nesters. Sandy is a suburban Boston home stager with a to-do list to give you nightmares. She's selling the rambling home where she's raised a family, gently booting her slacker son into real life, saving her best friend from a cad, bonding with her inscrutable Southern gentleman son-in-law, and saving a marriage that's lost its way. Cook (Seven Year Switch) knows the territory of secret longing and snappy dialogue, and though she gets this charmer off to a slow start, lovable busybody Sandy more than pulls her weight as she discovers a post-mom identity, settling a goofy score with an officious Post Office worker, and tossing a lifeline to an unlucky woman in dire need of an act of faith. There's a lot going on in this sometimes wacky tale of an ambitious micromanager forced to accept that the whole world cannot be staged, but there's never any doubt Sandy will finally embrace her less than perfect life. (June)