Must Love Dogs review

Forget adoring canines, you Must Love Mediocre Romantic Comedies to enjoy this limp affair. Sure, it's as cute and cuddly as a puppy, but even puppies go to the toilet which is where Must Love Dogs all but ends up. Desperation and self-pity aren't particularly endearing traits which explains why the characters embodied by such good looking actors as Diane Lane and John Cusack find themselves single, it also explains why spending time in their presence is only slightly less fun than buying string.

Based on Claire Cook's best-selling novel, Must Love Dogs chronicles the struggle of Sarah Nolan (Lane), a thirty something divorcee as she takes her first tentative steps back into the dating arena. It offers only an occasionally amusing insight into the emotional battlefield faced by a more mature woman, one still burdened by the baggage of her married past. A little more studious than the typical romantic comedy fluff, Must Love Dogs is still unable to avoid the genre's rigid blueprint for contrived plotting and expedient coincidences.

Single for only eight months, nevertheless Sarah's large and intrusive family, headed by her recently widowed debonair dad (Christopher Plummer), are so worried she'll end up on the shelf, they hold an intervention at which they all bring photos of prospective suitors. The most insistent is sister Carol (Elizabeth Perkins), who signs Sarah up with a computer-dating agency, but only after pressuring her to answer the personals. It's a ploy that results in the Freudian nightmare of a blind date with her father, prompting her despairing cry, "This is disturbing on so many levels."

Finally for Sarah, more promising candidates arrive in the form of Bob Connor (Dermot Mulroney), the recently separated father of one her preschool students, and the intense philosophical boat builder Jake Anderson (Cusack). Rusty in the precarious art of dating, Sarah finds herself having to choose between the two men.

The strong cast (with the exception of a vapid Mulroney) do their best to make-up for Gary David Goldberg's leaden direction, but even their talents can't conceal the flimsiness of Goldberg's screenplay which offers little more than glib character sketches. No doubt Sarah's plight resonates with those who find themselves facing the prospect of a lonely and loveless future, but rather than offer hope, Must Love Dogs seems more depressing which isn't typically the mood one looks for in a romantic comedy.

Kevin Murphy