Saw "Must Love Dogs"

Question

Pretty unashamed chick flick. Some excellent lines and some good moments, but overall way too predictable and by-the-numbers.

Diane Lane needs to get some career advice. She was sensationally good in "Unfaithful" but then she slipped badly in "Under the Tuscan Sun" an even more saccharine chick flick.
Scripts like this don't give the lead a hell of a lot to do, so she ends up wandering around looking like a commercial for some drug that makes you smile a lot, but turns your brain to oatmeal.
SPOILERS
Not that you could really spoil* "Must Love Dogs" but can anyone explain how John Cusack makes a living in this thing? He's doing well enough to have a brand new Prius (it had to be a Prius I'm guessing) and he livces in more square footage than most people you know, yet according to the script he has not sold a single one of the boats he makes by hand. Let's be *really* generous and say he *might get $20,00 for one, that still wouldn't go anywhere toward supporting his lifestyle.

"Don't try to lay no boogie-woogie on the king of
Rock 'n' Roll!"
Long John Baldry

Usenet · Accepted Answer

I got bored watching the trailer. And I'm sure it had all the best lines in the movie too,
Hate it when I don't even smile at the supposedly funny one-liners.

PS: If 'Friends' didn't bother people about income vs life style, then the writers must have thought, who needs income when you're in a romantic comedy?
dearme

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Pretty unashamed chick flick. Some excellent lines and some good moments, but overall way too predictable and by-the-numbers. Diane Lane ... be really* generous and say he *might get $20,00 for one, that still wouldn't go anywhere toward supporting his lifestyle.[/nq]
It's a given that American movie audiences simply don't give a flying fancucci how movie characters make a living. It's one of the reasons that I like foreign films: not every protagonist is an architect, or a lawyer, or an artist of some kind. It's either that, or gangster/hitman, or maybe writer (I am one, and it makes for a VERY dull life in terms of plot and action). I'm ****** fed up with it. There is NO smidgin of economic sense of life as it is worked and lived in most American movies.
Sometimes the rest of the world gets it right; or the indies do. But for most it's like THE LORD OF THE RINGS: who's growing the food? Who washes the dishes? Who tends to the horses? Who makes the weapons? Who schools the children, and in what? Where are the cops, the merchants, the blacksmiths, the weavers and hauliers and farmers, the whole economic support system? Who cares? Nock another arrow, kill another Orc; if it makes NO sense, nobody will notice, let alone care.

Once in a while there's a break in the pattern of willful disregard of normal economic activity: INTERSECTION seems to really be about being an architect, though not much. I'm not asking for documentaries, only for some reasonable grounding in the realities of making a living. But that's too fraught, nobody wants to deal with it.
Remember PATTERNS on TV, back when drama was life? They tried.

We don't.

Usenet · Answer

Suzy Charnas used his keyboard to write :
[nq:1]It's a given that American movie audiences simply don't give a flying fancucci how movie characters make a living. It's ... it. There is NO smidgin of economic sense of life as it is worked and lived in most American movies.[/nq]
You really are uptight, aren't you? Do you think the movies of the Depression would have been popular if they'd all been of dust and destitution like "The Grapes of Wrath"? People who have financial worries want to see people without financial worries, and short of camping out in front of Bill Gates's house, the movies will have to suffice. Sheesh!

Jeri Jo & Little Garcia Bear

Saw "Must Love Dogs"

Top answer

Get the Weekly English Kit 📬

Related Questions