John Krasinski talks about new film 'The Hollars'

CHICAGO (WLS) -- "The Hollars" is a new movie opening this week about family ties unraveling - and the love and humor that pulls everyone back together.

Eyewitness News reporter Janet Davies spoke to star and director John Krasinski about playing drama for laughs.

In "The Hollars," a New York artist with a pregnant girlfriend heads back to his small hometown when his mom gets seriously ill. He's confronted by a high school rival, a married ex-girlfriend comes on to him and his parents are broke.

"This isn't about a quirky family that a guy goes to visit, this is about your family, because family is complicated. Family can be hard. You may love your family, you may not. You may talk to them every day, you may never talk to them but they are your family and there's an existential pull that they have towards you that you will have with no one else on earth and I think that idea is so special - especially in today's world," Krasinski said.

Davies asks, "You and Emily Blunt were about to have your first child when you started on this, so did it nuance how you were going to direct it?"

"Not nuance, it completely about-faced how I felt about this movie. My daughter was 4 1/2 months old when we started shooting so I had a whole new understanding of this script," Krasinski said. "It was this pull of understanding my parents better, understanding my brothers better, even thinking of things as big as your family name, where you're from, this idea of being part of a lineage is such a huge idea and something I find very comforting, so I probably was working out a lot of stuff in this movie."