Movie Review: Because I Said So

(andPOP) - The production notes imply that "Because I Said So" is a comedy, which is funny, because I don't recall myself or any other member of the audience laughing. I might have laughed once, at the end, when a cake fell on someone's head, but it was the wrong head and it wasn't funny. If anything it was tragic, because the main character's a caterer and the cake looked really yummy.

"Because I Said So" comes from a pair of writers and the director behind such luminaries as "40 Days and 40 Nights," "Airheads," "My Giant," "The Story of Us," and "Stepmom," so perhaps I shouldn't be surprised. It's about an overbearing mother (Diane Keaton) trying to find the perfect mate for her lone unmarried daughter (Mandy Moore), the youngest of three. That could have been the basis for a good movie (doesn't everyone have a few of these love/hate relationships in their own family?), but from Keaton's opening lines, asking the photographer at one of her elder daughter's (I forget if it was the one played by Piper Perabo or "Gilmore Girls'" Lauren Graham) wedding why they have to say "cheese," (what she meant is "why do we have to put on fake smiles?" which might have worked) I barely bought more than four minutes of it.

The problem is the efforts of co-writers Karen Lee Hopkins and Jessie Nelson to make the characters "relatable" fall flat. The idea came to Hopkins at a dentist's office, overhearing another mother, rather than from personal experience, and you can tell. Watching "Because I Said So" I felt a real respect for movies like "Little Miss Sunshine" that give believable quirks to the characters (even if it's a grandfather snorting coke, a brother who won't speak, or a motivational speaker who tries to apply his rhetoric to every aspect of his life). Or "Volver," where the mother is humanized by a fart joke. Even "Children of Men," a science-fiction adventure, does it better when Clive Owen and Julianne Moore pass an egg to each other using their mouths. The dialogue in "Because I Said So" is hackneyed, and the character traits wouldn't pass muster on a sitcom. Diane Keaton's played this role before, and we've seen enough sex-crazed characters like Perabo, or detached psychologists like Graham, to make us as nearly depressed as Stuart (Tony Hale), the suicidal patient she treats horribly. When these characters turn out to have the kind of relationship where they'd get a massage together (as a present for mom!), it feels forced.

See if you can figure out where the story is going: after Moore's character, Milly (the caterer), goes through a particularly bad breakup, her mother Daphne (Keaton) places an ad on an internet dating site. Dressed in a polka dot dress and armed with a stack of Milly's business cards, she sits in a restaurant to interview potential suitors. After a montage where she interviews a score of losers (sidenote: why do these movies never have a handsome guy with a obviously screwed-up personal life?), the musician in the restaurant, Jason (Tom Everett Scott), comes down from the stage and saves her from what appears to be the last of them. He seems like a nice guy, but no – he's a musician, and Daphne has this "feeling" about him that he'll be all wrong for her daughter. After she shoots him down, he gets up and slyly takes one of Milly's business cards. Then, just as Daphne's given up all hope, the perfect (read: handsome) guy walks in: an architect, Johnny (Gabriel Macht).

Both Jason (the musician) and Johnny (the architect) manage to meet Milly without making it look like her mother did the arranging. She ends up dating both of them. Which do you think she ends up with?

I didn't buy more than four minutes of this movie. I didn't buy most of the conversations between Keaton and her daughters (except for the one where they talk about sex). I didn't buy Moore's relationship with the architect, or the way she breaks up with him, or the way she and her eventual beau get back together. I didn't buy Moore's audience of old people being moved to kiss each other after the happy couple was reunited at the end. I didn't buy Keaton telling Moore that she's never had an orgasm, or the way she appears to enjoy Adult Friend Finder, and I didn't buy the gossip of the Chinese women (the only noticable minorities in the cast) who give Keaton and her daughters massages. I think I bought Scott meeting Keaton, and Moore meeting his son, and Keaton meeting his father, but that's about it. I also might have bought Moore meeting Scott but she's forced to (discreetly) remove her panties and has a balloon stuck to her butt, and he pretends not to notice.

For the record, I enjoy romantic comedies – "13 Going On 30," "Just Like Heaven," "In Her Shoes," and "The Holiday" were four of my recent and semi-recent favourites – but this one was so bad I had to stick around when it was over and watch "Letters From Iwo Jima" to remind myself that movies are still worth watching. "Letters From Iwo Jima" was terrific. Go see that. Or "Little Miss Sunshine," or "Children of Men." If you're in the mood for a mother/daughter bonding experience, seek out "Volver." I also heard great things about last year's "Junebug." If you value your money, don't see this.



2*/5*