Marion Walker (Carrie Preston, TV's TRUE BLOOD) is experience writer's block with her first novel. The story is about Humkin (Michael Chernus, THE MESSENGER) and Mopekey (Dallas Roberts, 3:10 TO YUMA) who live on a boat in the middle of a field, subsisting on milk and cereal delivered by a milk truck. Their world is fictional, but Humkin realizes that he is a fictional character and wants to break free while Mopekey wants to stay. Marion's former writing teacher - with whom she has been romantically involved - Jackson (Austin Pendleton, A BEAUTIFUL MIND) tells her that her story has no conflict and advises her to kill off Humkin, the character she most identifies with, and focus on the Mopekey in the aftermath (the "kill your babies" adage). Reluctantly, Marion tries to have Mopekey kill Humkin by "smothering" him in an effort to keep him from leaving the boat, but she is unable to do it. She then tries to have fate intervene and have Humkin be hit by the milk truck. Humkin revolts and rewrites his fate, escaping into the real world and into the lives of a car salesman Bob (Reg Rogers, PRIMAL FEAR) - a man who has lost his wife and is in danger of losing his job and demo vehicle if he keeps depressing his customers - and his daughter Mimi (Lena Lamer) who has not spoken since her mother's death. Having figuratively killed the "better part" of herself, Marion - along with Mopekey - starts to unravel while Humkin runs free and takes to the streets in search of him. Meanwhile, Humkin connects with Mimi and also instills confidence in Bob, but what will happen when fiction and reality converge...

LOVELY BY SURPRISE does not get off to a good start. The quirkiness seems forced (the soundtrack is especially grating); however, the scenes between Preston and Pendleton are riveting and thought-provoking. Once Humkin has escaped Marion's book and interacts with the real world, the scenes with Bob and his daughter also get interesting - frankly, the whole second half of the film is much more interesting - although the whole weird character bringing joy and whimsy to a grieving family still seems grafted on in order to bring the film to feature-length. Writer/director Kirt Gunn is smart enough not to resort to contrivances to bring everything together neatly, and leaves it to the audience to interpret the ending. The end result is interesting if uneven (a more cerebral approach would have been more interesting).