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UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN.
In MUST LOVE DOGS the outcome is never in
question. We know that divocee Sarah
(Diane Lane), though currently experiencing the
doldrums that come with having been abandoned
by her husband almost a year ago, will be paired
off successfully and blissfully by the time the
closing credits roll. And we know from the way
her suitors are presented with whom that pairing
will take place. That’s not the point in a film like
this. Like an oft-told tale of the Kabuki theater,
where characters and plots are as well known to
the audience as the narratives of their own
individual lives, the point is the telling, not the
outcome. On that level, this breezy bit of fluff
succeeds as light escapist entertainment with
which to elude the real world for 88 minutes.
alone, even looking forward to being the strange
aunt in her large Irish family, the one who will
eventually live in a relative’s basement and
keeps a dog. Her family is having none of it after
an intervention featuring photos of potential mates
and casual hook-ups, her sister Carol
(Elizabeth Perkins) sets her up on an online dating
service using a high school yearbook photo and
the tag line, “must love dogs”, hence the title.
Meanwhile on the other side of town Jake
(John Cusak) is brooding about his own divorce
and the fleeting nature of happiness while
hand-crafting wooden sculling boats that no one
wants. He may not have a large Irish family such
as Sarah’s, but he does have Charlie (Ben
Shenkman), the lawyer who handled his divorce
and is trying to get him back out into the dating
world instead of carving boats and watching DR.
ZHIVAGO over and over while curled in a
semi-fetal position. Naturally, he answers Sarah’s
ad for Jake, they meet, and things take off, or not,
from there.
There are all the usual bumps along the way on
the highway of love, including a well-meaning
family who are pushy because they care, the de
rigeur montage of bad dates Sarah endures
courtesy of her online ad, including an inadvertant
one with her own widowered father (a smooth and
charming Christopher Plummer) the office skank
that Charlie wants to set up Jake with, a sweetly
bad first meeting between Sarah and Jake at a
dog park, and the seriously handsome father of
one of Sarah’s pre-school students (Dermot
Mulroney).
as they quip their way through dating hell with
light banter and quirky awkwardness. It helps to
elevate the formula into something engaging if
not terribly profound. Lane in particular brings
her fierce commitment to both the farcical nature
of the role and to those few moments of introspection
demanded of her character. Her Sarah is a resilient
woman who takes the world at large with a grain
of salt and a snappy retort. What should by all rights
be a stock recitation of “he done me wrong” when
talking about her ex-husband, instead takes on a
bittersweet nostalgia for what she thought she had
and for what it meant to her to find out that it never
was. It’s a scene followed in close order, and equal
truth, with a wild ride through the late night in
search of condoms when the mood turns more
tender, with Sarah grabbing the wheel from Jake
and plowing over speed bumps with small talk
covering the increasing desperation on the part
of both parties as the prospects for finding their
grail prove more and more elusive. If MUST LOVE DOGS ends with a painfully
contrived set piece, it also has a Yeats poem
exquisitely declaimed by Plummer, and adds
rowing lessons to the metaphors of foreplay.
It’s witty and friendly as it fails to break any
new ground in the battle (and detente) of the
sexes, has good performances from a savvy cast,
and celebrates romance without insulting the
audience’s intelligence.
Your Thoughts?