Late in Daddy & Them, Billy Bob Thornton's tribute to all things working-class and Southern, agitated shrink Brenda Blethyn finally erupts with a withering indictment of the family of her jailed husband, Jim Varney. Shaking with anger, she accuses them, in rapid succession, of being "totally fucked-up," unrelentingly negative, poisonously uncommunicative, unable to resolve conflicts, and ragingly alcoholic. Her explosion sets off a wellspring of spiritual growth that carries through to the film's resolution, but the filmmakers' seeming reaction to Blethyn's charges are essentially the same as the family's: a sort of jaded "Yes–and?" Thornton clearly loves his characters in spite of their Jerry Springer Show-friendly faults, and by the time of Blethyn's tantrum, that affection has become both palpable and infectious. A personal project in the truest sense, Daddy & Them spent a seeming eternity on the shelves at Miramax. Unrelentingly modest and paced somewhere between an amble and a mosey, the film follows the low-key misadventures of Thornton's family, a low-wattage bunch headed by crotchety patriarch Andy Griffith. When Griffith's brother (Varney) is arrested for murder, the crisis brings together the families of Thornton and his wife Laura Dern, which are both stuck in an endless cycle of dysfunction. An innate actor's director, Thornton favors agreeably languid, static takes that emphasize mood, performance, and regional flavor over plotting and forward momentum, neither of which the gorgeously filmed and scored comedy has much use for. Thornton gets nicely lived-in supporting performances from everyone from Blethyn to John Prine (as Thornton's enigmatic brother) to Griffith, Ben Affleck, and Jamie Lee Curtis, but Daddy & Them rises and falls on the lively chemistry between Dern and Thornton. Their expertly sketched relationship, like much else in this surprisingly sweet film, is cantankerous and loud on the outside, but disarmingly tender within.