CORPORATE LINE: Dating has never been easy. The time-honored search for a soul mate has always been one part humiliation, two parts aggravation, and a little blind luck thrown in for the fortunate.
Today’s version of the game can be a blur of websites, speed lunches and hordes of friends and relatives who know just the “right” person for you.
Thirty-something preschool teacher Sarah Nolan (DIANE LANE) has been divorced for eight months, which is much too long for her family to bear. With the best of intentions and only her happiness in mind, they stage an intervention in an all-out effort to get her out of pajamas and back into the dating scene, one way or another. Leading the charge are Sarah’s sisters, Carol (ELIZABETH PERKINS) and Christine (ALI HILLIS), eager to line up potential suitors, and their widowed father Bill (CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER), who sets a fine example with his own recent and very successful foray into the internet dating realm. Bill has lately been seeing the free-spirited Dolly (STOCKARD CHANNING), whom he met online, along with a number of other ladies whose names his daughters can’t quite keep track of.
Eager to launch their sister’s own cyber-dating debut, Carol and Christine pretend to be Sarah and post her profile on perfectmatch.com, with the enticing message, “Voluptuous, sensuous, alluring and fun. DWF seeks special man to share starlit nights. Must love dogs.” And wait for the responses to pour in.
Sarah soon endures a series of hilariously disastrous mismatches and first dates as the website offers up a stream of eager wannabes and one possible maybe – awkward but intriguing boat builder Jake Anderson (JOHN CUSACK), an idealist who measures romance by a Dr. Zhivago standard. A little on the intense side, Jake might be looking for more than Sarah wants right now. Meanwhile, at work, there’s a new distraction – Bob Connor (DERMOT MULRONEY), the newly separated dad of one of her young students. Charming and relaxed, Bob seems made to order, the perfect guy…but is he just too good to be true?
Based on the best-selling book by Claire Cook, and written and directed by two-time Emmy Award winner Gary David Goldberg, Must Love Dogs follows the comic, bumpy and ultimately rewarding journey of a woman cautiously rediscovering romance and learning to trust her own instincts again. Because, as her family enthusiastically reminds her, it’s never a good idea to give up on love.
THE GOOD: Diane Lane is very good as is John Cusack. The whole problem is that neither actor fits the part.
THE BAD: Are we to believe that the gorgeous Diane Lane is a nerdy preschool teacher? How many nerds do you know that could be a movie star? That is the point entirely. Lane is movie star beautiful. So, playing a part written for an average looking woman removes any sense of reality. You can’t pretend to be ugly. You can pretend to act nerdy but not ugly.
The occasion is set up for Lane and Cusack to get together and yet we have to wait and wait and wait for it to happen. The effectiveness wears off after the first meeting. The rest is merely a waste of the viewer’s time.
FRANKLY: A movie about dogs would have been more enjoyable. Sadly a great cast is wasted by poor casting and dialogue.
+ Charlie Craine
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