This anodyne movie, which doesn't feature many doggie delights, is a romantic comedy suggesting that women without men are soon in despair, buying themselves convenience food in the supermarket and lingering round the organic shelves in the hope of finding a healthy male specimen.
When was this made? In 1952? Diane Lane is the thirty-something preschool teacher, divorced for eight months, whose family pester her to find another mate.
Initially cyber-dating doesn't work, but then along come sensitive boatbuilder (John Cusack) and the newly separated dad of one of her young students (Dermot Mulroney). Romance is at last in the air. There are one or two good moments but it sticks like a leech to its misguided central idea.
Even a cast as high-powered as Elizabeth Perkins as an insistent sister to the heroine, Christopher Plummer as an ancient seeker after skirt, and Stockard Channing, as a liberated fifty-something hoping for the best, can't stop the film seeming hopelessly out-of-date, like a suburban version of Sex and the City without the bedwork.
Must Love Dogs
Cert: cert12A
