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There are all sorts of scenarios going on in You Can Count On Me, enough for us to relate to at least one. Be it not telling your mother about sneaking out, being unsure how to respond to a marriage proposal, falling in and out with your sibling, or getting it on with your married boss, we've all been there.

Sammy Prescott (Linney) is a single mother raising her eight-year-old son Rudy (Culkin) in the small town of Scottsville, where she's lived all her life. She works at her local bank, which has just employed a new, overly critical manager, Brian (Broderick), who refuses to let Sammy leave work just to pick up her son from the school bus. She receives a letter from Terry (Ruffalo), her long travelling and somewhat irresponsible brother who never calls, saying that he'll be coming to visit. It's not till he arrives when he tells her that he's only come because he's broke and needs some money. However, an unfortunate occurrence has Terry staying longer than expected, and before you can say "independent movie cliché," he finds himself bonding with his nephew Rudy.

Writer/director Kenneth Lonergan, originally a playwright, achieved success with the award winning This Is Our Youth. He made the transition to film after scripting Analyze This. You Can Count On Me was Lonergan's first directorial gig and he had some high profile help, with Martin Scorsese credited as one of the executive producers.

Linney is excellent as Sammy. Burdened with all that's going on, she falls into an affair with her boss, seeks guidance from her local priest, Father Ron (Lonergan making a cameo), and reaches breaking point with an obligatory "shove-everything-off-table-in-anger" moment. During Sammy and Terry's lunch, when Terry first arrives (intensified by its editing and various camera angles), she criticises how he doesn't know what he wants, asking, "How would you ever know if you found the right thing?" Her decision to ask Father Ron to offer Terry some advice only ends up making Sammy look bad when he suggests she should help by being a model example, clearly unaware of the sins she's committed.

You Can Count On Me was Culkin's first major role. Admittedly, his character Rudy is used more as a plot device for his mother and uncle. Part of that is down to him not behaving loudly or brattily, quite unlike a certain other Culkin when he was the same age. He is instead mature and rather reserved, with the scenes of dialogue he shares with Ruffalo being a highlight. Ruffalo's character Terry rarely talks down to Rudy like a child. When he stumbles into his bedroom at night, he just voices his opinions to him about Rudy's father and Scottsville, straight up.

You Can Count On Me received some major kudos for a feature film debut, with Linney nominated for an Oscar and a Golden Globe, as was Lonergan (for his writing). With the cast, the critical praise and a clutch of awards and nominations during its run of film festivals, did it find an audience?

Having premiered at Sundance in January 2000, it wasn't till November that year when Paramount released the film on just eight screens. It took $118,170 during its opening weekend, placing it at #33. It managed to rank as high as #16 in its fourth week. Made on a budget of $1.2 million, it managed to total up $9.18 million in the US and an additional $1.82 million internationally, scraping just over $11 million in all. It played for 28 weeks but unfortunately was only shown on as many as 150 screens, hindering the potential profits.

Even if it had expanded, the story on offer suggests that this is a little close to real life as fiction can get, making it a tough sell since sometimes audiences just want to see a car getting blown up rather than watching their own lives played out on the big screen. For example, even the best feel bad movie of recent years, Revolutionary Road, struggled at the box office. It was profitable, but despite a big name director, two hot leads, awards and nominations and an eventual wide release, it didn't even make the top ten.

The stars have all managed to progress to success, with Linney Oscar nominated twice more in Kinsey and The Savages. Culkin went on to star in Signs and indie hit Mean Creak. Ruffalo has been making a lot of right choices recently, with mainstream triumph in Where the Wild Things Are and Shutter Island. Writer/director Lonergan worked with Ruffalo and Broderick once again on his moral drama follow up Margaret, which was finished a few years back, but given the legal disputes it carries over the budget and prolonged editing, it might not see a release at all.

You Can Count On Me sounds boring on paper with its real life hardships, yet it is deftly written. Instead of putting the audience through sickeningly feel-good dialogue of the sentimental kind, Lonergan keeps them engaged with moments of wry humor, which works because it stays within the realms of believability.

You Can Count On Me
Directed by – Kenneth Lonergan
Starring – Laura Linney (Samantha Prescott), Mark Ruffalo (Terry Prescott), Rory Culkin (Rudy Prescott), Matthew Broderick (Brian Everett), Jon Tenney (Bob Steegerson), Kenneth Lonergan (Ron)
Length – 111 minutes
Cert – 15 / R