As far as Henry Poole (Luke Wilson) is concerned, life as he knows it might as well be over. After abruptly leaving his life and home for reasons we do not know, he pays full price for a house in cookie-cutter suburbia and settles into a life made up of vodka, pizza, and sleep. Negotiating for a lower price when he closes the deal? Too much effort. The repairs the realtor (Cheryl Hines) does even though Henry tells her not to? A waste of time. As he keeps telling people, "I'm not going to be here long anyway."

Enter his well-meaning but snoopy neighbor Esperanza (Adriana Barraza) and her discovery of a stain on the back of Henry's home that resembles Jesus Christ. It is a sign, she tells him. It's a water stain, he tells her. It is a miracle, she tells him. It's an accident, he tells her.

As he tells Esperanza, a friendly grocery store clerk named Patience (Rachel Seiferth), and Esperanza's minister Father Salazar (George Lopez), all he wants is to be left alone. He does not want to tell anyone about his problems. He doesn't want anyone to help him. He just wants to be alone with his misery.

Enter his young neighbor Millie (Morgan Lily) who has been hiding in her own suffering for even longer. She hasn't spoken a word since her father left over a year ago, her mother Dawn (Radha Mitchell) tells Henry. That is until she touches Henry's wall. It's just a coincidence, says Henry. It's getting harder to pretend nothing's happening, says Dawn.

And so unfolds the story of Henry Poole is Here: a tale of a man who does not want to believe, a community that does, the question of whether such things as miracles are real, and, central to it all, the question of faith.

In one scene, Esperanza challenges Henry saying, "Why is it so hard for you to believe?"

He replies by asking her why she's so ready to believe, why she needs him to believe so much.

And in their exchange arises an interesting look at what it actually means to have faith. To Henry, faith is a false sense of hope that might make you feel better now, but will leave you alone in the long run. It is a way to deal with things that happen for no reason and make sense of things you can't explain. But in the end, it doesn't change them, it doesn't make them better, and, therefore, it isn't worth anything. For Henry, the only world that he can understand is one based on human action, its limits, and beyond those, only random circumstances that we will never control.

For Esperanza, however, faith is about something real. Yes, it does make her life brighter and it has gotten her through some rough times. But in the story, her faith is more than just an idea that makes thing temporarily better; it is the evidence of its realization. For her, it is the answer to prayer, the healing of suffering, and the unexplained puzzle of coincidences that add up to a greater reason.

From beginning to end, Henry Poole is Here is a collection of all things hopeful. Slowly but surely, it pushes you in the direction of hope and faith and happiness. But as Henry comments, some of those nudges sound a lot like fortune cookies. And on that count, I would have to agree. In fact, I might go so far as to say that most of them do. The movie's words are resonant. "It's okay to be sad&ellips; sometimes you have to be sad to remember you're alive." Its messages are wise. "Everything happens for a reason." But in the end, I had trouble drawing much more inspiration from the movie than I would from a fortune cookie.

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