When this movie came out, I knew it was only a matter of time until my wife brought it home on DVD for mandatory viewing.
On the surface, it appeared to be a romance with dogs and how their owners four-legged companions reconcile with each other. Titles can be deceiving (see: Chasing Amy, where no Amy’s are actually chased).
Dogs here are used only as a McGuffin to get the two people to Meet Cute, or a Mc-Ruff-in, for those of you keeping score of the puns at home.
Diane Lane is a divorcee who resorts to using an online dating service to meet Jake (John Cusack) and Dermot Mulrony, who gives his usual animated-mannequin performance, but he’s so much of a non-presence in the movie (playing the romantic foil to Cusack) that I forgot he was even in the movie until I sat down to write this.
I’ll use their real names here because there’s no sense that either one put anything special into their characters other than their own personalities. One could imagine an episode of Inside the Actor’s Studio:
James Lipton: Must Love Dogs. Your character Jake is an extraordinary human being thrust into extraordinary circumstances.
John Cusack: Actually I’m just an ordinary guy who owns a dog.
James Lipton: And you call upon your deepest memories to bring realism to the role?
John Cusack: No, it’s really just me.
James Lipton: An internal struggle of self, let’s see some of the your character Jake.
John Cusack: I really just did the movie for the big payday, there’s nothing special about the character.
James Lipton: Fascinating. It’s like Jake is right in front of me.
John Cusack: (sigh)
Going through the standard rom-com motions, getting together, then breaking apart.
The Moment of Truth comes when Lane and Cusack realize they both love Dr. Zhivago.
Must Love Dogs references the Omar Sharif/Julie Christie movie so much that I was more interested in that plot line than what was happening to Cusack and Lane.
If the two movies ended the same way (with Cusack suffering a fatal heart attack as he chases after an oblivious Lane at a train station, a dog licking his face) this would’ve added a more interesting and deeper layer to the movie.
The real ending, something to do with Cusack paddling his hand-carved boat, was wasted on my wife, who fell asleep twenty minutes prior.
I, on the other hand, soldiered on, believing that there was some redeeming quality about the ending. Something memorable that would cause me to wake my wife up and force her to re-watch the final scenes of the movie. Something to justify the previous, dull 90 minutes.
Nope.
Seven Circle of Cinema: Sixth, in the Must…Stay…Awake… section
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