’Must Love Dogs’ has earned the undying gratitude of the men in my family. It has the ’dubious’ distinction of successfully killing any desire I might ever have of watching any other modern romantic comedies.
In the paint-by-numbers plot, we have Sarah Nolan (Diane Lane) a recent divorcee with a large meddling family, who is trying to re-enter the very intimidating dating field. After a montage of the requisite bad dates (no really, even the cliched depressed guy who starts crying over dinner) and one particularly horrifying date where she answers her dad’s (Christopher Plummer) personal ad (unfortunately, this is the level of humour that we are expected to watch here) Sarah’s sister puts her profile up on PerfectMatch.com. And of course, the guy she is looking for must love dogs(why? we’ll come to that in a bit). She meets the philosophical Jack Anderson (John Cusack) through this medium and has a very bad first date with him. Jack is very taken with her though, so he keeps trying to hang out with Sarah in the hope that the elusive chemistry that he knows is there, will spark for the two of them. In the meanwhile, Sarah, a teacher is attracted to the ’incorrigible’ father (Dermot Mulroney) of one of her pre-school students. Who does she finally end up with?
The problem with this movie is that by the time we come to the point that the all-important question (who she ends up with) is about to be answered we’ve lost all interest in the characters and couldnt care less if they get together or jump into a lake and kill themselves. The director Gary David Goldberg’s recent resume only includes TV sitcoms so maybe this (and the mind-numbing script) is why this movie is so lacklustre. Certainly with stars of the calibre of Diane Lane and John Cusack I expected something a bit more likeable.
Romantic comedies are a genre where the audiences dont expect anything new. We know the outcome, who’s ending up with whom and as long as they give you that warm, fuzzy feeling, something to laugh at and a decent 2 hours spent at the movies most of us dont complain. So, what’s wrong with this one ?? For starters, the performances are so lifeless and bored. It pains me to say this of Diane Lane and John Cusack, but it’s true. Neither looks too convinced with their characters and as a result the movie really suffers. Lane is better at this than Cusack is. Cusack who is more suited to the edgier kinds of romantic roles (Grosse Pointe Blank, for instance) hasnt fared well in the two formulaic ones he’s been in - Serendipity and this one.
The movie does try very hard. From the opening credit montage, where SWF’s and SWM’s discuss the best places to meet people, it has most of the elements which induce the ’awww cute’ factor in women - we have Lane as a pre-school teacher (cant we have the actresses in any other profession, fer god’s sake!) so she’s around tons of kids (the cute kinds, not the rebellious hell-raisers), a dog called Mother Teresa (??????) in there for an obligatory leprosy joke (??????), the token gay friends/ confidantes, the large happy family who burst into a Partridge Family (??????) song and poetry at family gatherings and the sisterly bonding over ice cream and dating stories. Unfortunately, collectively, all these elements do not work at all. None of the situations appeals to your emotions nor has any sensitivity or even humour and I stopped caring beyond a point.
The script tries to be very clever and fails utterly. We have a kid in kindergarten, who falls and gets a horrendously bloody nose and instead of bawling his eyes out, he utters a clever quip. A pre-schooler?? Clever one-liner?? And then we have the late-night dash to a store looking for condoms - unfortunately the stores are closed or have run out (? how can a pharmacy not have any). And this is supposed to be funny ?? And what do dogs have to do with anything ?? You may well ask ... I certainly had no clue. Mother Teresa isnt even her own dog. I wasnt even convinced with why the two end up together in the end, and there’s a particularly irritating scene at the grocery store (with an annoying butcher, who takes on the role that a bartender might have had in a rational movie) where they kiss just because the script demands it. Just about the only thing they got right, was in having middle-aged protagonists, but then the movie goes (literally) to the dogs, so I dont know if it this is good or bad.
Another thing that really jumps out at you is that there is absolutely no chemistry between Lane and Cusack. Both are competent in their roles and no more. The rest of the cast is not very inspiring either. Plummer is the playboy dad, and one of his flames is Stockard Channing who is bland, hair-sprayed and stays with Plummer inspite of his two-timing because ’he’s worth it’. The man’s a fossil, but this isnt the movie to raise such objections in! Dermot Mulroney is miscast as the philandering other man. He neither is a good actor, nor looks hot enough to have all the pre-school teachers lusting after him. Plus, he lives in a trailer!! If that isnt a turn-off, I dont know what is anymore. The director seems to be very enamored of the power of the internet vis-a-vis dating, since he has Channing’s character arouse incredible passion in a 15 year old (she’s 61), whom she meets online via her personal ad. Ennui inducing? No doubt. I cannot even generate more interest to continue bashing the movie. If you do have a thing for dogs, watch Animal Planet or alternatively ’The Truth about Cats and Dogs’ .... you’ll be much happier.