Birds of America on AllMovie

Director Craig Lucas teams with screenwriter Elyse Friedman for this sociologically-slanted comedy drama concerning three eccentric siblings who were forced to grow up in an environment with no actual grown ups. In a typical family, the pattern usually goes something like this: Parents have children, children grow up, children move out, and family comes together for visits on holidays and special occasions. Unfortunately for Morrie Tanager, any concept of normalcy was thrown out the window when his parents died, and he was left to raise his two siblings Ida and Jay in the family home. These days Morrie shares the home with his wife Betty, Ida is a promiscuous artist who's always traveling despite the fact that she's perpetually broke, and Jay is a reclusive weirdo who frequently conducts antisocial experiments. All that the perpetually constipated Morrie wants out of life is to please his wife Betty. While it's been quite a while since siblings Morrie, Ida, and Jay have all been together under one roof, those familiar childhood dynamics quickly return when Ida comes knocking at the exact moment Jay goes supernova. As neurosis and instability suddenly cascades through the home like a dysfunctional Niagara Falls, Morrie and Betty suddenly find their delicate attempts to secure Morrie's tenure washed down the river right towards the big drop.