“Must Love Dogs” (Warner Brothers)
Diane Lane and John Cusack are excellent actors who usually make pretty darn good movies. Thus the question of the day is – how did they get talked into making “Must Love Dogs” This is a romantic comedy without the romance and without the comedy. It plays out like a Lifetime Channel movie, and to add insult to injury a bad Lifetime Channel movie.
Lane plays Sarah, a forty-ish pre-school teacher whose husband has divorced her so he could marry a younger woman. Now her family has decided she has to get back into the dating game. After all even her widowed father (Christopher Plummer) is seeing someone (Stockard Channing).
Sarah’s sister Carol (Elizabeth Perkins) has gone so far as to put Sarah’s picture on an Internet dating service. The description she posted says Sarah is “voluptuous” and to be her type the man who responds “must like dogs.” That is so cute I could throw up!
One of those who responds to the ad is Jake (Cusack) a boat builder by trade. He also is so sensitive he watches “Dr Zhivago” over and over. Oh, and by the way he does like dogs.
As soon as they meet they seem to be perfect for each other, except they have no chemistry. No, the movie doesn’t play that way; the no chemistry is between Cusack and Lane. These two actors have less heat between them than Scarlett Johansson and Ewan McGregor in “The Island.”
One of the major flaws in the movie is trying to say that someone as attractive as Sarah could ever have a problem getting a date. She ought to be fighting the men off, not sitting at home with the friendly gay couple she knows. This gay couple, by the way, is the only happy couple in the movie.
The film is top heavy with talent. Besides Lane, Cusack, Plummer, Channing and Perkins there is also Dermot Mulroney who plays the father of one of Sarah’s students. They seem better matched than Sarah and Jake, but that’s just my opinion. It ain’t going to happen because Cusack is a bigger name star.
The movie is rated PG-13 for profanity and sexual situations.
If you like dogs then you might like this movie because this movie is a dog. Or to be more specific this movie is a dawg.
I scored “Must Love Dogs” a false ad 4 out of 10.
