ON A CLEAR DAY
PG-13, 98 minutes

The middle-aged hero of “On a Clear Day” may be Scottish, but he belongs in a blues song. He’s lost his job. His son, Stuart, done drowned. He’s suffering from panic attacks. And though his lady may not be cheating, she is – more humiliatingly – secretly studying to drive a bus.

In a feel-good flick like this, there’s only one cure for the blues: two parts triumph over adversity, one part newfound self-respect. All of which Frank (Peter Mullan) acquires when he is gripped with the desire to swim the English Channel. It sure beats severing a hand, as a co-worker does on his last day to score some insurance money (to no avail).

But first, this recently unemployed shipbuilder can’t commit. He hedges when his clingy friends – who might as well be named Moody Scot, Shy Scot, and Devil-May-Care Scot – ask him: “Are you going to swim the Channel?”

Then, his wife takes up the cause: “You’ve been hiding [swimming the Channel] from me.” And finally his surviving son, now a father of two boys himself, chimes in: “Swimming the Channel won’t bring Stuart back.”

Mr. Mullan, growling in a hangover bass, stoically maintains his ambitions. In fact, a little too stoically: When clouding over with enraged, shamed paralysis at the employment center, you think he’s going to explode at the humiliations of modern industrial realities.

That would be a very different movie, but director Gaby Dellal doesn’t waste a second in rushing Frank and friends through their inspirational paces. The clincher is when even Frank’s example is apparently not enough, and a handicapped swimmer at a community pool is pimped out as a handy repository of hope – twice.

– Nicolas Rapold

WHEN DO WE EAT?
R, 86 minutes

The traditional four questions asked during a Jewish seder may be mentioned in “When Do We Eat?” but the only query relevant to the film itself is “When is this thing going to end?” Salvador Litvak’s Passover-set comedy is a predictable, unfunny, head-shaking mess that seems to go out of its way to present not a single likable presence in 90 minutes.

In Mr. Litvak’s story of a woeful Jewish family, there are no people – only stale, one-dimensional caricatures, each assigned their own distinctive quirk. Ira Stuckman (Michael Lerner) is a hotheaded blowhard who designs Christmas ornaments. He has a high-strung wife, Peggy (Lesley Ann Warren), and a paranoid, Holocaust-surviving father, Artur (Jack Klugman). He also has a lesbian daughter, Jennifer (Meredith Scott Lynn), a prostitute daughter, Nikki (Shiri Appleby), an autistic son, Lionel (Adam Lamberg), and a drug addict son, Zeke (Ben Feldman). Last but not least is his estranged son, Ethan (Max Greenfield), who in the past year for no reason in particular has become Chasidic. Ethan, it should be noted, also has had an affair with his once-removed cousin, Vanessa (Mili Avital).

Once they sit down at seder, it takes less than 30 seconds for them to bicker. Even when Zeke spikes his father’s medicine with an ecstasy tablet, it still doesn’t stop him from yelling. They argue in circles over nothing and everything for an hour and a half until a manipulative happy ending finally allows us escape. Mr. Litvak and his co-writer, Nina Davidovich, write themselves into a corner early on with a surplus of characters who are forced to share such an insubstantial story. The movie is nothing more than a miserable family being miserable together.

– Edward Goldberger

95 MILES TO GO
R, 78 minutes

“Ninety-five Miles to Go” presents comedian and former sitcom star Ray Romano driving through six cities in eight days performing with Tom Caltabiano, his writing partner and former roommate, as well as the director of the documentary. Lest one think the film is entirely stand-up, Mr. Romano’s routines make up at most only 20 minutes of the film. The majority of the documentary is devoted to the pals (along with an intern, Roger Lay Jr.) driving from city to city (Mr. Romano is afraid to fly). Everyone may love Raymond, but it appears that his heart belongs firmly to Subway, one of the many food stops along the way. Fans of Mr. Romano’s work will take to this film more than his detractors.

It’s just as well, perhaps, that the film shows only a little of Mr. Romano’s stand-up – some of his punch lines are at least 10 years old. If anything, his relatively clean act works as an amusing contrast to his foul-mouthed real-life persona.

Shot like a home video (which it basically is), the film is fairly purposeless; there are sections devoted to nothing more than watching Mr. Romano watch television. The film seems to make the point that comics are as boring as everyone else. Messrs. Romano and Caltabiano know what they have (and what they don’t), and they keep their film brief – it doesn’t even make it to 80 minutes. Despite it all, there is something funny about how plain and pointless the whole affair is.

– E.G.