Starring: Diane Lane, John Cusack, Elizabeth Perkins, Dermot Mulroney, Christopher Plummer Director: Gary David Goldberg Year of release: Country: USA Official site www2.warnerbros.com/mustlovedogs/ (includes the trailer) (click to enlarge)

Bland, generic and showing every sign of having been market-tested to death, Gary David Goldberg's Must Love Dogs, which is based on the novel by Claire Cook, is a slight, pandering romantic fantasy which is propped up only by the work of its cast. John Cusak plays Jake anderson, a recently divorced, uptight, retentive wooden boat builder, who can’t sell a single scull and over-analyses himself and his relationships. He starts dating Sarah Nolan (played by Diane Lane) an also recently divorced, pre-school teacher, after her sisters send her profile into a dating website. For Sarah, the only successful couple she currently knows is that of her gay coworker Leo and his significant other Eric , and her only real prospect, Bob Connor is off limits to her since he's the father of one of her students. Once signed up to the dating site Sarah ends up meeting a bunch of losers that only depress her further, however, she soon becomes intersted in Jake and he offers to take Sarah on his boat and to teach her how to scull.

Review by Mike Sullivan My bride warned me that it was a chick flick, but that I should watch this film because it had lots of rowing in it. Early on, the Cusak character was dressed like a GQ ad and was sanding a wooden racing shell. In his boathouse was a finished whitehall style wherry, beautifully done. In this scene he discusses with a buddy the merits of wooden shells, that they still win competitive races. Later there's a scene of him refusing to sell the wherry (I think a company in Florida makes it) to a guy who wants to cut it in half and mount it on the wall. His indignation was pretty phoney, I thought Cusack was a better actor than that... (Somebody wanted to do that with a perfectly fine wooden shell I owned -- I told him to get closer while I pissed on his leg.) Later the Diane Lane character jumps into a barge rowed by high school girls chasing after Cusack rowing the wherry in an intense but novice fashion. Hey, what happened to the oar, why is the oarlock closed when he hauls her aboard his wherry? I think the rowing was done in a place like Wellesley or Kent, but I couldn't really tell, it didn't look familiar, and IMDB didn't have any rowing locations listed. The plot sucked, by the way, not only was it a chick flick it was a really bad one. My kids are 18 and 15 respectively, and rarely do we agree on anything. About 15 mins into film we started looking at each other with that 'hmm, I wonder when the movie starts' look. 10 minutes later we were pantomiming suicide moves until my son got the remote out and showed us the great advantages of watching bad movies on DVD. This is a bad movie.