Imaginary Heroes (2004)

Creating the perfect family and living up to that ideal can take its toll on individual members of the home unit. The favorite son of Imaginary Heroes (2004), a golden-boy athlete who can expect only the brightest of futures, rocks one such self-important clan to its cracked foundation by unexpectedly killing himself while still in high school. A whole new type of pressure seeps into the dinnertime dynamic. Mom and Dad can hardly stand to look at one another, and the dead boy’s kid brother now knows for a fact that he will be forever overshadowed by the exploits of his elder sibling. The bonds of mother, father, and offspring strengthen in places where none of them had imagined they would even be tested. One miracle of Imaginary Heroes is that the movie succeeds at several appropriate and revelatory junctures as intentional comedy.