A Lot Like Love (2005)
There's nothing better than a great romance... to ruin a perfectly good friendship.
Starring: Ashton Kutcher, Amanda Peet, Kathryn Hahn, Kal Penn, Ali Larter, Taryn Manning, Gabriel Mann, Jeremy Sisto, Aimee Garcia, Lee Garlington, Birdie M. Hale, Ty Giordano, Melissa van der Schyff, Josh Stamberg
Director: Nigel Cole
Running Time: 107 minutes
US MPAA rating: PG-13UK BBFC rating: PG
Comedy, Drama, Romance
When college graduate Oliver (Ashton Kutcher) and grunge kid Emily (Amanda Peet) spot each other at the airport, there is an instant attraction, and they quickly join the mile high club. Recognising, however, their incompatability - he is ambitious, geeky and blandly conventional, while she is smart, sassy and free-spirited - they part company after spending a day together shooting photographs. Over the next seven years, their paths occasionally cross and their friendship deepens - but the moment never seems right for anything more to develop, until finally each discovers that the other is getting married, with all the predictable rom-com confusion and soul-searchings.
Like the relationship that it traces, Nigel Cole's 'A Lot Like Love' could be characterised as a series of missed opportunities. The first segment, in which Emily repeatedly knocks back Oliver's gormless advances with a set of effortlessly barbed put-downs (and this AFTER she has had sex with him), promises a film that will bristle with stark personality contrasts and chalk-and-cheese banter - but in fact at their very next meeting it becomes as clear apparently to them as to us that they are made for each other, with only circumstance, rather than character, getting in the way of their living happily ever after. They may be a not-quite couple who drift in and out of one another's lives (and share a pivotal moment at a New Year's bash), but the tensions between them are far less mesmerisingly spiky than their equivalent in
It's Got: Internet diapers, lovelorn vampires, and - rather refreshingly for a romantic comedy - a relationship that begins with sex and ends with love rather than the other way round.
It Needs: To deliver more on its initial promises - the seven-year structure seems particularly pointless.
Alternatives: When Harry Met Sally, 9 Songs
Summary: Charming enough snapshots of a seven-year relationship that, thanks to missed opportunities, never quite gets off the ground.
Review Date: 20th June 2005
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External Links
Official Web Site
A Lot Like Love at the IMDB
