Must Love Dogs
By: Mark Runyon | Category: On DVD | 12/27/05 | 10:58 PM
 |  |  Grade: C+ | Genre: Romantic Comedy
Summary: While Must Love Dogs doesn't really cover any new ground or give us the Hollywood couple we wish we could see canoodling on the tabloids, it is a mildly enjoyable comedy that employs quick wit and clever dating situations.
In life, even us guys have to take on the occasional chick flick. Sometimes you can chalk it up as a favor for a girlfriend, or perhaps your favorite actor tries on his sensitive side. You can't automatically relegate this entire genre to the film scrap heap. There are more than a few brilliantly made "chick flicks" that nail male/female interactions in very clever and enjoyable ways. Just take a look at When Harry Met Sally or more serious fare like The English Patient. The problem is you have all these other brainless features, drowning in cliches and warping reality with the obligatory happy ending. Just like their male counterparts -- the testosterone fueled action flick -- these Hollywood formula romances give the whole genre a bad name. Now we have the aging hottie Diane Lane and the perpetual everyman John Cusack striving to convincingly be the newest adorable couple in Must Love Dogs. Though we get the occasional witty banter and likable co-stars, it fares little better than an average romantic comedy, hoping to speak to singles everywhere about the new quirks that come packaged with Internet dating. |
So Susan (Diane Lane) is newly single after she made an ill-advised bet on the wrong horse. By her words, he fell out of love with her. Translation, she got swapped out for the younger, blonder, 'bounce a quarter off her butt' model. It happens. When we meet her, it's been nine months since she got dropped and desperation is starting to settle in. When her family comes over to the house, they each come baring a photo of a guy that Sarah just has to meet. The only qualification necessary for getting matched up with their sister/daughter seems to be that the guy is either single or wish they were as is evidenced by the men looking to have an affair with her. She even snaps at the meat man when he tries to sell her extra chicken breast. It's not looking pretty. So her sister Carol (Elizabeth Perkins) decides to staple her profile up on perfectmatch.com and fiddle with the facts a little bit. I mean isn't every woman voluptuous in her own heart? So the men start applying for the coveted role as Sarah's date, and she starts weeding out the chumps from the losers. This is a great crop. We've got the guy who cries through all his first dates, destroying his chances for date number two. We've got the man who talks so much about himself, he's unaware another person is even at the table. We even have the man, rather prosaically, carrying one single rose that ends up being her father (Christopher Plummer). Can Sarah's self worth withstand this continual shelling from desperation?
 | | | Must Love Dogs | | Starring: Diane Lane, John Cusack, Dermot Mulroney, Elizabeth Perkins & Christopher Plummer | | Director: Gary David Goldberg |
| | View the Trailer (Quicktime) |
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Then she meets Jake (John Cusack) who subtly piques her curiosity with his unique witty charm, yet can't keep himself from ruining it by shoveling his foot in his mouth. He's smitten, she's moving on to bachelor number 14. Then she meets the handsome father, Bob (Dermot Mulroney), of one of her preschool students, and boy it's fireworks city. The boy himself has warned her that daddy's a bit of a philanderer, but Susan seems content on getting that bad boy urge sexed out of her system. The remainder of the film she seems to dovetail back and forth between Jake and Bob, taking one-step forward and two steps back. All the while her dating father is hooking up with three different ladies, twenty years his junior, like he was the true daddy mac.
Our two leads, Diane Lane and John Cusack, are very likable. Cusack is playing Cusack as he always does. You know what I'm talking about. The wounded man-child that is witty and charming although he doesn't know it. Lane is a beauty, covered over in that schoolteacher plainness. She needs to take a few tips from her desperate housewife alter ego in Unfaithful, and she'd be beating men off with a crowbar. While its nice to see them match wits, there really is little chemistry igniting these two.
It's all very surface level and never really breaks past that formulaic romantic comedy we've seen a hundred times over. The dates are tensionless, the sparks are diffused and the butterflies are released from the stomachs. These light, airy comedies so often sidestep reality to pack in a couple extra laughs. Where the film works is in the character dialog and the comic delivery. The whole Internet dating is still a new experience for most singles. Though its breaking into the mainstream in a big way, there are still lots of those misconceptions that only freaks are online. This is fertile ground for Must Love Dogs to play off of. Lane is definitely a solid asset here and is probably the strongest element elevating this beyond being simply a flat, average romantic comedy.
While Must Love Dogs doesn't really cover any new ground or give us the Hollywood couple we wish we could see canoodling on the tabloids, it is a mildly enjoyable comedy that employs quick wit and clever dating situations. The ladies, looking for a no-brainer romance while perusing the rental aisles, will no doubt flock to this one like it was Belgian chocolate. Their boyfriends will groan at the prospect of yet another date movie. I think there is enough cleverness to keep you gents entertained. If nothing else, it should trigger all those sexy Diane Lane scenes from Unfaithful to perk you up a little bit.
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