A Lot Like Love Review
by Harvey S. Karten (harveycritic AT cs DOT com)April 25th, 2005
A LOT LIKE LOVE
Reviewed by Harvey S. Karten
Touchstone Pictures
Grade: C-
Directed by: Nigel Cole
Written by: Colin Patrick Lynch
Cast: Ashton Kutcher, Amanda Peet, Kathryn Hahn, Kal Penn, Ali Larter, Taryn Manning, Gabriel Mann, Jeremy Sisto Screened at: AMC, NYC, 4/18/05
Thematically, Nigel Cole's "A Lot Like Love" is reminiscent of Bernard Slade's play, "Same Time, Next Year," a popular romantic comedy that follows a love affair between people who rendezvous at a motel once a year for twenty-five years. During that time American society had undergone changes in manners, morals and attitudes, all of which are mirrored in their meetings for the quarter century.
This is not to say that "A Lot Like Love" can be favorably compared. In fact Colin Patrick Lynch's screenplay is banal enough to make its audience long for romantic stories like Richard Linklater's "Before Sunset," in which Ethan Hawke's Jesse and Julie Delpy's Celine accidentally run into each other a year after their last meeting determined to see whether the spark they felt not far back is still there.
As in the Linklater movie and the Slade comedy on Broadway, two people, one living in L.A., the other heading a business in San Francisco appear to run into each other by serendipity over a period of seven years, beginning when they are twenty-three years of age, somewhat wiser by their thirtieth birthdays. They get their first views of each other just after Emily (Amanda Peet) breaks up with her long-haired musician boyfriend while the two are watched with bemusement by Oliver (Ashton Kutcher). They board a plane, and before you can say "meet cute," a rebounding Emily follows Oliver into the airline's rest room, he emerging with a smile on his face while she gives him a knowing wink after returning to her seat.
A normal person would assume that two unattached, young people would pursue their adventures straight-on, but given the conventions of romantic comedy in which the love-birds are pushed together and pulled apart only to meet happily in the concluding moments, these two are characters in a movie, not in real life. Their long-distance courtship does not go on for playwright Bernard Slade's twenty-five years, but seven years from age 23 to 30 is just right for the presumed target audience, the only real change in physical appearance occurring in the length of Oliver's hair. Still, given the years that Oliver and Emily have known each other, they have matured, social and business cares taking over their lives making an ultimate get- together progressively more difficult.
Ashton Kutcher's acting is regularly mediocre, or maybe he's unlucky enough to receive loser parts given to him (Simon in "Guess Who," for example) that make Woody Allen look like Cary Grant, his schlubby mannerisms making us wonder for all of those seven years how someone with the grace and looks of Amanda Peet could possibly fall for him. Perhaps realizing that neither dialogue nor attempts at anything original could carry the movie, Linklater gives carte blanche to Alex Wurman and others in the music department to let loose with a barrage of pop songs that threaten to–or are intended to–mask the dialogue.
Rated PG-13. 107 minutes © 2005 by Harvey Karten
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