Dan (Carell) is a moralistic newspaper columnist, a widower, and a strict but beleaguered father of three daughters, two of them teen-agers.

NEWYORKER: Dan in Real Life

In the beginning, there was the lordly general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, Branch Rickey (Harrison Ford), a Bible-quoting, sixty-four-year-old Republican with a strong moralistic streak and a sharp eye for business.

NEWYORKER: Artful Dodgers

Victorian that he was, Wagner could not help viewing Shakespeare's rowdy, devious Elizabethans in a moralistic but sentimental light, sometimes with disarming results.

WSJ: Richard Wagner's 'Orphans' | By Matthew Gurewitsch