Not recommended. Here’s the thing . . . and it’s important. If you make a movie about cancer, children or suicide, you’re writing a check to the audience. There are too many folks out there in the darkness who've actually experienced some of that. If you’re good, even those who haven’t are going to feel bad. Before the lights go up, you better make good on that paper. The Broken Circle Breakdown does push all these buttons. It also throws in some lovely bluegrass songs, surprisingly well sung by Belgians, primarily Johan Heldenbergh and Veerle Baetens. The first half of director Felix van Groeningen’s (The Misfortunates) story is very nice and I had hoped that the payoff would be somehow connected to the power of beautiful music to overcome sorrow. At one point that connection to the misery of Appalachia is mentioned, but it never paid me back for watching a child die.