Let Me Count the Cliches

ST. VINCENT (C) - Here's a list of what went wrong with this movie:

• A pregnant hooker.
• A pregnant hooker with a heart of gold.
• Naomi Watts as a pregnant Russian hooker with a heart of gold.
• Naomi Watts doing a ridiculous Russian accent.
• Bill Murray doing an accent.
• Chris O'Dowd.
• Chris O'Dowd not doing an accent.
• Chris O'Dowd as a priest.
• Chris O'Dowd as a wisecracking priest, maybe exaggerating his accent.
• A character valiantly recovering from a stroke, seemingly in a matter of days.
• A child actor making his screen debut.
• The aging wife suffering from dementia not recognizing her loving husband.
• The noble nurse.
• The noble single mother who is a nurse.
• Brooklyn, yet again.
• Sheepshead Bay, to be exact.
• Characters at odds brought together by the innocence of a child.

Here's what went right: At the end, in the big sappy scene that this all builds up to, I cried. Those characters and that hack of a filmmaker got to me. And stick around for the end credits, when Bill Murray sings along to a Bob Dylan song; it is a glimpse of the old Murray, rather than the grizzled actor tossed out to sea with an insipid script.