SCREEN

A LOT LIKE LOVE

Martin Stein

Peet and Kutcher's film is a lot like a great romantic comedy—only lacking the romance and laughs. Directed by the Brit behind Saving Grace and Calendar Girls, Cole fails on American soil, serving up a seven-year-long story that feels like it's twice as long.


Emily and Oliver meet as young slackers on the same LA-to-New York flight, with Emily having just broken up with her boyfriend and surprising Oliver with an induction into the mile-high club. Upon landing, they go their separate ways, only to meet up again somewhere in Manhattan in one of those coincidences that only happen in badly contrived movies. Oliver passes on his parents' phone number as they again part ways, betting Emily to call in six years and see how well he's done for himself.


This will be the pattern of their relationship over the rest of their 20s, as Emily breaks up or is dumped, and either calls Oliver or finds him on her doorstep, with life finding them always in the separate cities of LA, San Francisco and New York. Each time, they goof around a little, screw and leave. As opposed to the days when romantic comedies actually involved couples getting to know one another as they fall in love, we've now reached a point where the exchange of bon mots and bodily fluids suffice. Too bad, especially given the hotness factor of the two stars, we never even see the fluid-exchange. Maybe Cole could've made it a seven-year 9 1/2 Weeks.


What we do see are a lot of dull, repetitive episodes with the sorts of sloppy errors one—well, one never expects, period, like Emily and Oliver stating that they're driving north from LA and winding up in Joshua National Park.


While Kutcher's character at least has the plausible reason of wanting to get his career going before getting involved, Peet's Emily bases her entire reasoning for avoiding Oliver as a partner on some asinine "three-strikes" rule. Toward the end, there is a downbeat scene that, if the movie had ended there, would have made Love into a profound statement on not living life as it comes and the perils of procrastination. Instead, we soon find ourselves in one of the most overused romcom endings ever put on film, the only message being you just lost 100 minutes of your life.

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