Sam (Bale) has just graduated from Harvard Medical School, and he's taking his fiancée, Alex (Beckinsale), a brittle Boston Brahmin, to L.A., where he's doing his residency. The plan is for them to stay at the house of Sam's mother in Laurel Canyon while she's away on business. A legend in the music world, Jane (Frances McDormand) has been producing records since before the Beatles broke up. But when Sam and Alex arrive, Jane's still there, as are the members of the hot British band with whom she's working, one of whom, Ian (Alessandro Nivola) is her new boyfriend.

A free-spirted aging hippie who still smokes dope, cavorts naked in the pool and brings "wine, weed and chicken" to the Hollywood Bowl, Jane is oil to Sam's water. Her abandon angers -- and perhaps frightens -- him. When he berates her for not planning better, she looks up from rolling a joint and asks, "Who plans a change of plans? Sorta paranoid, don't you think?"

Writer-director Lisa Cholodenko ("High Art") is savvy enough to put some fun in her "Family Ties" plot. Much of the dialogue is very sharp, and she captures the convoluted rich-hippie aura of Laurel Canyon, where the country store has an espresso bar.

Yet the film is uneven at best. Once Alex is tempted away from her thesis on fruit flies by a booming guitar chord in Jane's home studio, you know what's coming. Stuff like the inevitable three-way nuzzle between Jane, Alex and Ian feels more indie-film trendy than clearly thought through. Within the movie's context, what could've had shock value feels forced.

That's when the movie's true purpose (well, my take of its true purpose) kicks in. Which is to demonstrate that any movie with McDormand in it is worth a look. Jane can be seen in simplistic, granolahead terms, but there's nothing simple about McDormand's portrayal. She's Penny Lane (Kate Hudson) from "Almost Famous," grown up and with the business-smarts equivalent of a Harvard MBA. Her place may look like a crash pad with its empty bottles and leftover Chinese food, but it's also a testament to how very well she's done for herself -- walls of gold and platinum records and photos of her with everyone who was anyone for the past three decades. Sam's the only male she's never managed to charm. Perhaps that's because he didn't want her as a sex partner or an Earth Mother. He just wanted a mom.

McDormand shows us how sexy and tough Jane is, but she also reveals her twinge of regret, the tiny whiff of guilt. Her performance has all the edge and vitality the movie sorely needs. When she's off-screen, the film deflates.

"Laurel Canyon" is a first draft for a better, riskier movie. Not that you won't enjoy it, but it bobs and floats instead of delving into deeper, troubled waters.

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