Twenty-eight-year-old writer-director Michael Prywes shows the style and preoccupations of a much older man in his debut film Returning Mickey Stern, which sports broad, sitcom-ish performances and a surprising amount of sweetness and wisdom. The hero is a 67-year-old New York magician, played by Joseph Bologna (looking like a taller, blockier Dan Hedaya). Bologna had a summer fling on Fire Island when he was 17, then lost track of his paramour, only to reconnect with her again as a senior citizen. A year after they marry, she dies of lung cancer, and as the movie opens, Bologna and lifelong best friend Tom Bosley (looking like a grayer, flabbier Tom Bosley) return to Fire Island to collect her effects and reflect on their lives. The plot kicks in when Bologna shows up at the beach resort and sees a young woman (Kylie Delre) who looks just like the teenage version of his late wife, and a young man (Joshua Fishbein) who looks and acts like the teenage version of himself. Convinced that he's meant to correct history, Bologna plots to give Fishbein and Delre a chance to have the lifetime of happiness that he missed. It takes a lot of Three's Company-like miscommunication and awkward voiceover narration by Bosley to keep this scheme in motion, and Prywes should demand a refund from whatever screenwriting seminar taught him to keep repeating flat bits of character business, like Bologna's ice-cream headaches. But even with those liabilities–and an arid sound design that keeps the actors too high in the mix and the ambient sounds too low–Returning Mickey Stern is pretty entertaining. Credit Prywes' bright use of the Fire Island resort location, which gives his movie the breezy, light atmosphere of a vacation. Credit also his willingness to let the story flow past the pro-forma narrative beats, allowing for a few pleasant twists that may have been inspired by that screenwriting seminar, but work anyway. The movie is more of a not-bad festival choice than a sleeper gem, but Prywes' good ideas are more original than those of many low-budget indie filmmakers. The best involves Bologna relearning a lesson he teaches one of his protégés: that the trick to being a good magician is "you can't believe in magic."