A death discloses a father's secret life, and a secret sibling

People Like Us is one of those "inspired by true events" stories - a tagline so commonplace these days that its absence from the beginning of Ted comes as kind of a shock.

The true events at the heart of Alex Kurtzman's alternately absorbing and maddening Los Angeles melodrama have to do with the director's discovery a few years back that he had a secret sibling. His father was in another marriage, another life, and hadn't let on.

In Kurtzman's terribly titled feature debut, it is Sam Harper (Chris Pine), a wheeling, dealing, cellphone-slinging "facilitator" (read scam artist) who gets to fly from New York, where he lives with his girlfriend, Hannah (Olivia Wilde), to L.A. for the funeral of his dad. A record producer of legendary stature, with the man-cave of gold records and music biz mementos to prove it (he encouraged Columbia to sign Elvis Costello, we're told), Jerry Harper has bowed out, leaving a bitter widow - Michelle Pfeiffer - in his wake. And at the wake.

Sam doesn't want to be there, but he is - Hannah makes him get on the red-eye. And then he meets with his father's lawyer, and gets the shock of his life: the name and address of a woman, and $150,000 to give to her.

"He left it in a shaving kit for his alcoholic love child," the stunned Sam later tells Hannah. Stunned, and facing a thorny ethical dilemma: Does he carry out his father's wishes, or take the money himself - which he sorely needs?

Of course, he has to see who this woman is first, which requires stalking, and subterfuge. Her name is Frankie, she is played by Elizabeth Banks - the actress hell bent on getting those rom-coms behind her. Frankie is a single mom with a troubled middle schooler (Michael Hall D'Addario) and, yes, a drinking problem. Ironically, she makes her living as a bartender at a swank downtown hotel.

"Temptation is the mother of all tips," she deadpans.

The writing in People Like Us - at least the first two-thirds - is sharp, and smart. Pine is convincingly edgy, full of rattled turmoil. Banks' Frankie hides her hurt well, dressed in her "upscale skank" work outfits, and worrying about her latch-key son. As for the kid, the casting agent found a natural in D'Addario, and Pine's Sam works his way into the mother and son's lives by befriending the boy first. On a trip to a record store, Sam picks out the must-have albums for him: Gang of Four, Buzzcocks, Joy Division, the Clash. (Hey, Sam should get together with Keira Knightley's wandering waif in Seeking a Friend for the End of the World - clutching her essential vinyl as the apocalypse approaches.)

Pfeiffer, playing the grieving widow with her own secrets, does a lot with her few scenes - she's a presence, holed up in her Laurel Canyon home, painting and drawing, cynical, perceptive. It's a pleasure watching her in something good.

But then, alas, People Like Us takes a turn toward hopeless soap: soul-baring confessions, an endless getting-to-know-you montage (to Dylan's "Tangled Up in Blue"), a truly excruciating cornball ending. These people really aren't like us, after all. They're the figments of some Hollywood screenwriters' imaginations, turning to mush before our eyes.EndText