Imagine a standupcomic who delivers the punch-lines of his jokes first, a plane with landing gear that deploys just after touchdown, or a stick of dynamite with a unique fuse that ignites only after it explodes.
The first film directed by the novelist and screenwriter Nora Ephron is a modest, uninsistent family comedy about a single mom from Queens who becomes a famous standupcomic and, in the process, strains her relationship with her two young daughters.