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Must Love Dogs (I’m guessing the working title was Yentapalooza) follows the excruciating life of Sarah Nolan (Dianne Lane), a divorcee looking for love. By day, she teaches at the only preschool in America that pays its teachers a salary of over $100,000, judging by the décor and size of her house. By night she listens to sassy banter and dating counsel from her impish sisters Carol (Elizabeth Perkins) and Christine (Ali Hillis.)

Occasionally, her wise Irish father, Bill (Christopher Plummer) stumbles into frame with his free-spirited girlfriend Dolly (Stockard Channing.) He recites Yeats and reminisces about his long-dead wife in a crisp Irish accent that makes the Lucky Charms’ Leprechaun sound like Seamus Heaney.

In contrast, Dolly is at her most charming when she shares delightful stories about her 14-year-old boyfriend whom she picked up on the Internet by lying about her age.

I was doing fine until the entire family began an impromptu sing-a-long of a Partridge Family song. That’s when I was forced to suppress the urge to vacate my seat, break into the projection room, and strangle myself with the film’s raw celluloid.

Unlike this critic, Sarah never considers suicide. Instead she starts dating a flurry of men. We learn in a throbbing dating montage that practically all men on this planet suffer from cute but debilitating social disorders.

When the smoke clears, two men remain. Bob (Dermot Mulroney) is a recently separated father whose son attends the preschool where Sarah teaches. Jake (John Cusack) is a moody boat builder who is obsessed with Doctor Zhivago Sarah meets Jake when one of her Mephistophelean sisters covertly sneaks her dating profile onto the Internet.

Since High Fidelity and Being John Malkovitch, I’ve been waiting for Cusack to play a substantial role. It’s been five long, dull years. Currently, he’s working on a production of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House that’s directed by Liv Ullmann, so cross your fingers everyone.

While Sarah woos both men, she gets advice from a range of idiosyncratic sources that include her drunken brother, the local butcher, her gay coworker and his boyfriend.

Why do gay couples never touch or show affection in movies like these? I’m convinced that homosexual characters in romantic comedies serve the same role that Eunuchs did in the ancient Middle East:nonsexual good listeners who exist to assist hapless rich women.

It’s no surprise to anyone when the actor and actress on the movie’s poster end up together, while the actor who isn’t displayed turns out to be a two-timing jerk and gets his comeuppance.

For those of you who forgo this review and decide, at your peril, to catch Must Love Dogs in the theater, a word of advice. Before the movie begins, check the projection room and make sure it’s locked in case, like me, you lose the will to live.

link directly to this review at http://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=12657&reviewer=396
originally posted: 07/30/05 07:57:07
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