A Lot Like Love English Movie
Three years ago, director Nigel Cole made a deliciously wacky comedy, "Calendar Girls", about a bunch of small town women who decide to raise funds to beautify the local hospital by posing nude for a calendar.
The closest that Cole's new romantic comedy comes to capturing those zany moments is when two young strangers - one a knapsack-towing spaced-out guy called Oliver and the other a frazzled, aggressive woman named Emily - do 'it' in the toilet during a flight.
Cute! Forget political correctness, "A Lot Like Love" challenges every law of gravity and aesthetics.
The young pair played by Ashton Kutcher and Amanda Peet are so confused about their lives you begin to wonder: should cinema be a reflection or a rectification of modern-day mindsets?
If you want to see mirror images of two geeky post-adolescent self-indulgent youngsters treating life as a prolonged orgy of self-gratification, then search no more. "A Lot Like Love" is a lot like "American Pie" gone mushy... though blessedly not squishy.
There's a scattering of interesting moments throughout the desultory narration, but not enough to prevent a creeping feeling in your belly about the purpose of such a film.
While focusing on the ongoing skirmish of the sexes, the peripheral characters often get squashed in the razzle-dazzle. This did not happen in "When Harry Met Sally"; where we met a lot of interesting incidental characters. Unfortunately in this, the newest and one of the most adrift avatars of the Harry-Sally prototype, the marginal characters don't create a stir of interest.
What we see are essentially two potential losers coming together off and on as they drift in and out of other relationships.
The process of discovering love is often far more productive and beautiful than love itself. Alas, this cannot be said about the seven-year journey undertaken by Emily and Oliver. The protagonists seem to exist in conceited isolation. We rarely see little of that crackling chemistry which made Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal such spanking representations of contemporary relationships in "When Harry Met Sally".
Kutcher remains pretty much within the 'A' to 'Duh' range of acting skills. Fortunately, his character is blessed with a family of eccentrics who make him look relatively animated. Amanda Peet, who frisked our funny bone in that Canadian comedy "The Whole Nine Yards" and its sequel, seems to enjoy being cast as a surly anti-diva.
But the scenes don't justify her efforts to rise above the syrupy sensibilities of the romantic material. More often than not she's seen fornicating, flirting or trying to be funny with her co-star.
Kutcher of course is deadpan all the way.
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