The Best You Can

**The Second Act is the Hardest: A Review of *The Best You Can* (2025)**

There is a peculiar risk when real-life couples share the screen. The chemistry that exists in the privacy of a marriage often evaporates under the studio lights, leaving audiences watching two people awkwardly attempt to recreate a magic that refuses to be performed. However, *The Best You Can*—the 2025 dramedy from writer-director Michael J. Weithorn—sidesteps this trap by leaning into the weight, rather than the spark, of shared history. Reuniting Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick for the first time in over twenty years (since the decidedly darker *The Woodsman*), the film is less a rom-com and more a melancholic meditation on the indignities of aging and the surprising resilience of the human heart.

Weithorn, best known for his television work (*The King of Queens*), brings a sitcom veteran’s ear for dialogue, but visually, he strives for something quieter. The film’s aesthetic is modest, favoring the warm, lived-in interiors of Brooklyn brownstones and the lonely, fluorescent hum of a security guard’s night shift. While the direction occasionally betrays its TV roots—relying heavily on shot-reverse-shot conversations—Weithorn makes a fascinating choice to frame much of the central romance through the glowing rectangle of a smartphone. The late-night text exchanges between Cynthia (Sedgwick) and Stan (Bacon) are not treated as mere plot devices but as a visual motif of modern intimacy, highlighting how we often confess our deepest fears to the void before we can whisper them to a person.

At its core, the film is a study of two people suffocating in their own lives. Cynthia is a high-strung urologist watching her brilliant husband, Warren (played with devastating, flickering lucidity by Judd Hirsch), disappear into the fog of dementia. Stan is a chronically underachieving security guard, drifting through life with the loose-limbed resignation of a man who missed his exit ramp years ago. Their "meet-cute"—involving a thwarted robbery and an urgent need to use a bathroom due to prostate issues—is undeniably awkward. Yet, it serves a distinct purpose: it strips away the gloss of Hollywood romance immediately. These are bodies that fail, bladders that ache, and minds that forget.

The film’s true strength lies in how it handles the "messy parts" of love. Weithorn resists the urge to make Stan a knight in shining armor or Cynthia a damsel in distress. Instead, they are simply two exhausted people finding a rest stop in one another. The widely discussed wedding dance scene serves as the film’s emotional thesis. As Stan coaxes a reluctant Cynthia onto the floor, the transition from stiff, self-conscious swaying to a freeform, joyous release is not just a plot point—it is a physical manifestation of letting go. It is in these non-verbal moments that Bacon and Sedgwick’s decades of real-life partnership pay dividends; they communicate in a shorthand of glances and touches that no script could engineer.

However, the narrative does occasionally buckle under its own ambition. Subplots involving Stan’s musician daughter (Brittany O’Grady) feel like detours in a script that is otherwise laser-focused on the central pair. Weithorn seems afraid to let the silence linger, occasionally filling the void with sitcom-style misunderstandings that feel beneath the dignity of the story he is telling.

Ultimately, *The Best You Can* is a film that understands the terror of the "second act." It argues that while we cannot pause time or reverse the decay of our loved ones, we can still find new rhythms in the static. It is not a revolutionary piece of cinema, but it is a deeply humane one. In an era obsessed with origin stories, Weithorn has given us a touching "survival story"—a reminder that sometimes, just showing up for another person is the most heroic thing we can do.