DVD Review: Must Love Dogs

I’ve been a Diane Lane fan since her turn as a prodigy chastely kissing Thelonius Bernard under Il Ponte Sospiro in a Little Romance (1979). Lane was 14 at the time and had appeared on the cover of Time Magazine. For many years, she was the actress who had done things at early ages, e.g. star in Coppola’s Cotton Club at 19. For a variety of reasons, none of them talent or look, Lane either didn’t get the break or chose not to get the break (Searching for Deborah Winger) that would make her an A list star.

I’ve also been a John Cusack fan. Cusack has made something of a career of playing comic dyspeptics from inverted Clark Gable in the Sure Thing (Rob Reiner’s take on It Happened One Night), to Say Anything’s romantic aspiring kickboxer, to a hyper-competitive air traffic controller in the underrated Pushing Tin, to a list-obsessed record store owner in High Fidelity.

Co-starring them seemed promising enough. Unfortunately, Must Love Dogs (2005) just doesn’t hunt at least if you're hunting for inspired laugh out loud comedy. Since Lane made her way back to the low A list playing adulteresses in the very good Walk on the Moon and Unfaithful, it seems like she’s still been struggling to find the right vehicle to build on her Oscar nomination for Unfaithful. Under the Tuscan Sun was a travel brochure disguised as a movie. Fierce People didn’t get general release. Perhaps someone reasoned that romantic comedy would work for her. She, after all, appears to have the biggest necessary ingredient to be a female romantic comedy lead, the camera loves Diane Lane and she certainly can act.

I suspect much of the reason this prolonged Gary David Goldberg ad for perfect match.com doesn’t work the way it should rests with Goldberg's unimaginative direction and episodic script (Family Ties, Spin City). If you remember the dog who serves as the symbol of Goldberg’s Ubu productions, it appears that he decided to turn his company tag line into a feature length movie. Part of the joke in Must Love Dogs is that neither of the principals in the movie actually owns a dog, they’re just borrowed as dating props.

Like the dogs in the movie, Goldberg seems to have borrowed much of the formula. There’s a straight out of My Best Friend’s Wedding group performance of the Partridge Family Theme Song, he even lets Dermot Mulroney (it happens that he was in My Best Friend’s Wedding as the title character) do the bit where the fishhouse waiter jumps into the scene to play the piano. In another scene Christopher Plummer recites Yeats at a family gathering in a straight steal from the funeral Yeats reading in Four Weddings and a Funeral. In yet another scene, Stockard Channing’s online flame turns out to be younger than expected, any of about twenty John Hughes movies and done much better in another variation in Napoleon Dynamite. Wisecracking sister, shallow best friend, horny senior citizens, blind date from hell walk on montage, to late night condom chase from any of dozen of made for cable comedies or network sitcoms. In fact, Dogs has a sitcom episodic feel and punchline rhythm, reminiscent of James L. Brooks, another tv writer turned movie maker, at his worst.

Article Author: Chancelucky

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