Must Love Dogs

When I first saw the title of a new movie coming out called Must Love Dogs I laughed until my pants hurt, and then laughed a little bit more. I was expecting the most horrendous, incredibly bad film ever with the lead role being an animal, I imagined a film along the lines of Air Bud or Soccer Dog: The Movie but with a horrible love story thrown in. Upon further reading, however, I discovered John Cusack was billed to star in this film.

I have had a special spot in my list of favorite actors reserved for John Cusack ever since the killer 80's film Better Off Dead (the film has a hamburger rocking some Van Halen on guitar!), and also the Cameron Crowe staple Say Anything. He truly is an incredible actor, and right about now you're asking me why I made that statement and how I can actually believe it. Well, it's because John Cusack's acting range is about the same as the acting range of a cheeseburger. He plays one character in every single film he's in, and that character is John Cusack. He's actually very similar to Billy Bob Thornton in that respect. He does, however, play this character incredibly well and the character is quite fetching, unlike Billy Bob. In spite of this slight flaw, if you want to call it that, his career has continued to blossom and he has made the same romantic comedy 8 or 9 times now and people seem to be completely oblivious that they're spending their time and money watching a movie they've already seen multiple times. For some reason, I can't bring myself to dislike the guy. Perhaps it's the way he manages to wear a Ramones shirt as much as possible to show how he's totally a laid back guy but knows how to rock, or perhaps it's the fact that he seems like the guy you'd sit down with and chat over a beer or two at the local pub.

Thanks to this special little love of John Cusack, I immediately labelled the film as THE romantic comedy of the summer everyone must see. When I saw the poster hung up with a giant black dog with it's tongue lolling out in the middle of John Cusack looking like John Cusack and Diane Lane looking like the typical female interest in a romantic comedy, I was excited and my expectations were set.

The film starts by characterizing the two as heartbroken fourty-something-year olds somewhat given up on the whole idea of finding someone new ("benched"). Their friends refuse to let them wallow in self-pity and find them dates online, and eventually they hook up together thanks to John Cusack being so charming and captivating. After a brief romance, the sleazebag interloper played by Dermot Mulroney comes in to mess everything up. There was not one point in the film where even the tiniest thought of "Oh no, John Cusack maybe you can't win them all" came up since the film continually bludgeons you over the head with how much of a jackass Mulroney's character is and how John Cusack is made for Mrs. Lane. Also, there's a sub-plot about her widowed father dating three women at once that, which in the end, might've possibly made for a more interesting story, however, I was satisfied with what I received. That's really all that needs to be said about the movie, the whole thing can be summed up that easily.

The film is absolutely as formulaic, cliche, sappy, and lovable as I expected. This is one of the few romantic comedies where there are some genuinely funny jokes through out the film that had me laughing out loud. The only twist, if you'd like to call it that, on the romantic comedy storyline is that both of these characters are slightly older and have been divorced. That's it.

I loved the way John Cusack had an awesome apartment/loft place to live, even after being divorced and running his own failing business. I loved the way John Cusack poured his heart out to an old man with an Irish accent solely because the man mentioned he liked one of his boats. I enjoyed how Diane Lane should have had no reason to interact with this guy after all the crap she had been through but for some reason she picked this guy to give a shot. Oh by the way, there is another twist, Diane Lane has a large family that meddles in her love life, it's not just her friends. And her butcher meddles in her love life. And she babysits her brother's dog named "Mother Theresa" a lot so I guess that means she loves dogs.

In the end, I was not disappointed in the slightest by this film, I knew what I should be expecting, and received exactly that, added with some great jokes and funny segments involving pets.