Labor Day starring Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin: It's no Holiday

I posted this past March that Joyce Maynard's Labor Day was coming to the big screen. It's been hitting the festival circuit but won't officially hit our multiplexes until Christmas Day.  And then, despite the splashy December 25 date on the poster; Labor Day won't actually open in theaters across the country until January 21, 2014. The director, Jason Reitman, adapted the script himself without Maynard's involvement. I wonder if that has helped or hurt as I happened to catch a glance at a couple of headlines.

Rope of Silicon for intance called it 'a half-baked melodrama worthy of Nicholas Sparks, not Jason Reitman.'  Then again over at Variety Peter Debruge called it 'contrived but powerful' so I'm curious.

A true trailer hasn't been released yet but we do have this 58 second clip of Kate Winslet as Adele, Josh Brolin as Frank, the escaped convict, and Dylan Minnette who plays Adele's son Henry at 16. It looks like a fairly early, tense moment when all three are just coming to understand the stakes.  I'm intrigued. Watch the short clip and see if you agree.