Must Love Dogs
Rating: 
Sarah (Diane Lane) is recently divorced and has a huge family who is always trying to set her up with someone. In fact, her sister Carol (Elizabeth Perkins) sets up a profile for Sarah on perfect-match.com including the qualification, “Must love dogs,” as it pertained to an earlier conversation they had joking about personals ads.
Sarah goes out with a number of losers, but two candidates seem to be coming back to her mind over and over again.
Bob (Dermot Mulroney) is a recently separated father of one of Sarah’s preschool students. Sarah knows going out with him will only complicate matters between the student-teacher relationship, but Bob seems very interested in her and he’s really cute.
Jake (John Cusack) is also recently divorced. He builds boats and has an egotistical friend. Other than that, we don’t know much about him. In fact, for a movie costarring John Cusack, there’s really way too little of him in it. Cusack’s character is quirky, funny and poetic (sort of like every other character Cusack ever plays) and it would have been nice to see more scenes with him and Sarah together, or really even him alone.
This was a good movie, but it was just missing something. The movie’s focus was apparently trying to make Sarah and Jake’s relationship work out, but everything sort of fizzled. There were few scenes with Lane and Cusack together and far too much focus on Mulroney’s character. Of course there was conflict when Jake found out about Bob, however it was as anticlimactic as the movie’s ending.
It was funny, there were some cute dogs and I really wish I could give it a higher rating, but the plot just wasn’t fleshed out very well. This is definitely worth seeing if you’re a Cusack fan or enjoy a light hearted romantic comedy. Wait for this on cable, don’t bother paying to rent it.
