A Lot Like Love film review

certificate_12A

A LOT LIKE LOVE

The majority of romantic comedies feature a couple who spend the entire film overcoming a series of obstacles before love finally prevails and they end up together. A Lot Like Love adopts a different approach. Before the blunt Emily (Amanda Peet) and more bashful Oliver (Ashton Kutcher) have even exchanged a word, they are joining the mile high club in the tight confines of an airplane toilet. Having begun with a bang rather than a whisper, they then spend the next seven years endeavouring to figure out exactly what kind of relationship they do have.

In a genre bound by formula, anything that is remotely unconventional is refreshing. Indeed, for the most part A Lot Like Love has an engaging spark and welcome absence of saccharine-filled exchanges. Peet imbues Emily, a jagged contradiction of vulnerability and self-assurance, with a desirability coupled with an abrasive edge. Her erratic manner is disarming, but appealing to the easy going Oliver. Kutcher provides him with a winning smile, a ready willingness towards self-ridicule, but little in the way of emotional depth. It's yet to be determined whether Kutcher can, or is required to, offer a performance of nuance and substance. Certainly neither were in evidence here, but nor were they demanded. More important is charm and Kutcher has that in spades.

When Emily and Oliver meet at the baggage claim following their mid-air sexual collision, Emily warns him against trying to make anything more of the incident by declaring, "Don't ruin it." But in life as in romantic comedies human nature isn't so easily discouraged. Otherwise it would have been a really short film. Instead, the two begin a series of fleeting encounters interrupted by years apart. One of the film's more irksome elements, along with too many expedient coincidences, is its slightly repetitive nature. Their relationship seems doomed by bad timing and a ready willingness to walk away for no convincing reason. This pattern, headed up by timeline chapters like '7 years ago', is duplicated until events finally arrive in the present.

When they first meet, Oliver is fresh out of college with big dreams and "all his ducks in a line". In the face of Emily's cynicism, he bets her $50 that within six years he will be wealthy and happily married. His pursuit of that goal runs parallel with her struggles as an actress and a photographer. As their fortunes fluctuate, so does their respective power in their intermittent relationship.