Film Reviews

A Lot Like Love

• Rating:
• Director: Nigel Cole.
• Starring: Amanda Peet, Ashton Kutcher, Taryn Manning.
• Details: US / 107 mins (12s).

On a flight from LA to New York, Oliver (Kutcher) and Emily (Peet) indulge in a little mile-high shenanigans. He's smitten, she's not - but over the next seven years or so, they're thrown together time after time. Will they ever realise they're meant to be together? Did I leave the gas on? Is that a stain on the wall or a giraffe-shaped trick of the light? A virtual rehash of When Harry Met Sally, but without the wry observational humour and chemistry between the leads, A Lot Like Love is apparently what passes for a romantic comedy in today's world. Nigel Cole (Calendar Girls) directs with all the panache of an arsonist on the apron at Heathrow, frantically engineering character collisions without ever stopping to consider whether we should actually care about these people, especially when the characters themselves don't seem to care very much about one another. Perhaps the idea is that fate/destiny/karma makes these decisions on our behalf, and no matter how hard we fight it, what will be will be - all of which would be fine and philosophically dandy if the protagonists didn't keep sticking things up their noses. Implausible, grating and self-absorbed in its own MTV-style cleverness, this is eminently avoidable.

Review by Declan Burke