Year: 2007, Runtime: 106 , Director: Michael Lehmann, Starring: Diane Keaton, Mandy Moore, Gabriel Macht, Tom Everett Scott , Lauren Graham, Piper Perabo, Stephen Collins
"Because I Said So" may appear to be a romantic comedy, but it's actually a two-woman show about the power struggle between a mother and daughter.
Diane Keaton plays an overbearing mom who treats her youngest daughter, played by Mandy Moore, like a Barbie doll, choosing her clothes and searching for the perfect mate for her baby.
Moore, desperate over her dismal love life and sick of her mother's meddling, is about to throw in the romantic towel.
So Keaton does what any insane woman would do: She places a personal ad for her daughter on the Web. She even screens the dates for her - without Moore's knowledge. Ah, what a wacky Web we weave.
At least that's what the filmmakers hoped. But the movie's seesawing between romantic comedy and drama is disorienting. It could have been an enjoyable light comedy, or a dark tale of obsession, but it doesn't work.
Keaton initially is interesting and playful, an adult Annie Hall who has retained her signature character's funky clothes and expressive gestures. But eventually she begins to grate on viewers as well as her daughter as she insists on pulling the strings in Moore's romances.
It goes from quirky to obsessive in a hurry. A subplot involving Keaton's love life - including an attraction to the father (Stephen Collins) of one of her daughter's beaus - doesn't help.
Moore herself is a typical singer-turned-actress-ing�nue, although she does shine in a scene in which she and Mom have a frank discussion about sex.
The potential men in Moore's life, Tom Everett Scott and Gabriel Macht, are mere afterthoughts in this movie, as are Moore's spirited sisters, Lauren Graham and Piper Perabo, which is unfortunate.
The interaction among the four women provides the most entertaining moments in the film, but there should have been more of them.
Milly (Moore) is an insecure young woman with a habit of finding herself attracted to strange men. Her mother Daphne (Keaton) has two other daughters, but sees Milly as the one who really needs her help. In order to prevent Milly from making more mistakes with men, Daphne places adverts on personals websites in an attempt to find her a suitable partner. She keeps this fact secret from Milly, but as a result of her intervention Milly ends up dating two guys at once, Johnny (Macht) a musician, and Jason (Tom Everett Scott) an architect.
Most romantic comedies in recent years can be described as 'harmless fluff' or 'pleasant distractions'. But Because I Said So is best described by the phrase 'unbearably wretched vomit-inducing rubbish'. Pretty much everything about it is either ghastly, predictable, annoying or overly sentimental. It's one of those films which will cause you to check your watch regularly, and for some reason you'll swear time is actually going backwards.
Diane Keaton has always trodden a fine line between being quirky and being really annoying. Even her best performances had to accomplish this feat, but when it works it works perfectly (such as in Annie Hall). But her performance here is so grating, so over the top and so dreadful to watch, you'll not only feel really sorry for Milly as a character, but for Mandy Moore for having to act opposite her. Daphne is supposed to be overbearing, but you're not supposed to want her to be flattened by a bus or burned to death.
Mandy Moore is pretty much the only good thing about the film. She shows a bit more range than she has in the past and she manages to generate some sympathy for her character. It's not Macht's fault, but Johnny is just far too nice to be accepted as a real person - he's a romantic comedy archetype. Similarly, Jason is so clearly intended to be a turd from the moment we meet him that it's no surprise when he becomes one. This indicates the biggest problem with the film, and that is its absolutely ghastly writing.
Not only have Karen Leigh Hopkins and Jessie Nelson lifted their characters straight from 'The Idiots' Guide to Romantic Comedies', they have no idea what makes something funny, moving or even entertaining. Intended joke after intended joke falls flat, you're never sure when they're trying to be serious, and there are many scenes that are toe-curlingly dreadful, such as when Milly describes her orgasms to Daphne.
I rarely give 1 star to romantic comedies, but it's equally rare that one manages to be completely unromantic and totally unfunny at the same time. Very few of them are a chore to sit through, but Because I Said So feels like a film twice its length. It even has a really rubbish title.
The new romantic comedy "Because I Said So" has no flesh and no blood. It's made of sugar, spice, and lavender, less something you'd find at a movie theater and more what you'd order by the ounce at Teavana .
Diane Keaton plays Daphne Wilder , a long-divorced Los Angeles baker determined to pair off her daughter Milly (Mandy Moore), a caterer. She's the youngest of three daughters and the only one who's still unwed. Daphne places an epic online personal ad, then arranges for an ultra-yuppie architect (Tom Everett Scott ) to sweep Milly off her feet. Meanwhile, the musician/single dad (Gabriel Macht ) who expresses interest, pursues Milly despite mommy's objections. When the fudge hits the fan, mom justifies it all by explaining that she just loves her daughter too much not to lie to her and manipulate her into companionship.
I left this movie devastated. Not because it's one of the worst films ever made about having a mother, dating two men, or catering (although on all three fronts, it is). I was upset because my own mother apparently doesn't love me enough to connive dates for me, especially while wearing little sunglasses around the house and absurd layers of clothes always -- always -- topped off with a ginormous belt, the way Keaton does.
Feeling inadequately obsessed over, I called home and demanded an explanation: Why no sneaky setups with perfect men, mom? Why no anaconda-size belts, huh? "Because I'm not crazy," she said. "You can make your own matches." She went on to explain that she failed to see the need to lie if she ever did want to set me up, anyway.
Of course, deception is the only way to get this movie past the 60-minute mark. The script's various ruses require maximum stupidity on Milly's part. Even after the film displays a remedial obviousness in telling her (and us) which of these two men is worth keeping, she seems torn. In one scene with the yuppie, Milly breaks one of his family heirlooms, and he snaps at her. In the very next scene with the musician, she drops some dishes; he comforts her. But no light goes off in her head. Not only does this character not have a bulb, she's missing a socket, too. Moore does have one fantastic flash of positive self-realization, but this immensely lik able woman is required to be a nitwit.
Eighteen years ago, the director Michael Lehmann helped bring us "Heathers," a smart anti-chick-flick flick. The renegade teens in that movie would have snarled at the whiny woman in "Because I Said So." It's unfortunate that he's swilling the industry Kool-Aid now, eking out would-be romantic-comic contraptions. This is a sloppily made bowl of reheated chick-flick cliche s. There are the obligatory inappropriate-suitor montage and the depressing overreliance on a cute canine for many reaction shots. The Wilders drop in on department stores like a quartet of yammering cluster bombs, and subject the Korean day-spa staff to their vapid family dramas. (Piper Perabo and the priceless Lauren Graham , who takes the least conventional approach to this material by taking none of it to heart, play -- alliteration alert! -- Mae and Maggie, the two married daughters.)
Firmly in middle age, Keaton seems more popular and glamorous than ever. But the movies she stars in keep getting lousier. "Because I Said So" isn't nearly as good as "Something's Gotta Give" and "The Family Stone," which were mediocre. Here she doesn't transcend the overbearing material with brilliant facial acrobatics or wry goodness as she did, respectively, in those other two movies.
In fact, she's required to be overbearing herself, a trait that betrays what's best about her unique brand of comedy, which erases the line between prideful self-confidence and crippling self-doubt. In "Because I Said So," Keaton is accidentally sad. And I haven't even mentioned the odd scene where Milly has to explain to poor, laryngitis-afflicted mom what she's been missing in bed all these years. (Women's-studies classes will have a field day with Keaton's having literally lost her voice in this moment.) I wish that she and her pal Nora Ephron would consider tailoring a few of Ephron's essays in "I Feel Bad About My Neck" for the movies.
In the meantime, watching the generations team up (even unwittingly) in the search for love, I was reminded that "Because I Said So" is a movie of its moment. On MTV's "Parental Control," moms and dads, disgruntled with their offspring's current mate, interview more suitable suitors. And on VH-1's "I Love New York," a charismatic, street wise chick from Syracuse, nicknamed New York, and her steely mother sift through a cast of nerds, players, and thugs to find the daughter's prince.
That entertaining show is about the balancing act between keepin' it real and real love. "Because I Said So" exasperates because even its best intentions are phony. When one of Milly's smitten suitors tells her, "I love that when I breathe you in, you smell of cake batter," you can imagine New York's mother kicking that dude to the curb.
Diane Keaton: What's not to like? She's 61, she still has her own face--a great one--and in film after film her comic wiles and emotional transparency, often mixed up in a wondrous blur, consistently outclass her material.
Mandy Moore: Very likable. She's 22, she still has her own face, and as an adult, at least lately, she hasn't given into the anorexic Hollywood ethos so prevalent among actresses and their handlers. She looks like a regular young woman. And she can act, which never hurts.
"Because I Said So": Formulaic romantic junk starring Keaton and Moore as aggravating mother and doormat daughter, living and loving in sunny, smog-free Los Angeles, where even the "regular" people live in zillion-dollar Venice Beach Craftsman cottages by the canal. The film, directed by Michael Lehmann (who did "Heathers" in earlier, meaner days), comes from a screenplay by Karen Leigh Hopkins and Jessie Nelson that's more like a screenplay kit. The results rest entirely and uncomfortably on the shoulders of its women.
The problem with parental characters who are noodges is this: If you don't write them correctly, all they do is noodge, noodge, noodge. Keaton plays long-divorced Daphne, meddler and yenta supreme. With her older daughters taken care of, she focuses her relational machinations on the youngest, Milly (Moore), a caterer by trade, who looks to her older siblings (Lauren Graham and Piper Perabo) for comfort and kinship, in the form of eye-rolling, shoulder-shrugging reaction shots.
Behind Milly's back Daphne places an online ad to find her daughter a man. Prime candidate is architect Jason (Tom Everett Scott), though a dating interloper enters the picture in the form of musician Johnny (Gabriel Macht). Soon Milly is torn between two lovers, not knowing her mother's role in all this.
It's easy to tell which dreamboat in "Because I Said So" has the edge, just as it's grimly obvious how the screenwriters are going to solve the problem of Daphne's loving intrusiveness. (Hint: Johnny has a single dad played by Stephen Collins, Keaton's husband in "The First Wives Club.") Keaton does all she can to enliven this desperate stereotype, coming dangerously close to overworking that smile in the process. But director Lehmann has no real knack for filming physical comedy. And there's a ton of it: Daphne getting woman-handled by a dour masseuse; Daphne getting a cake in the face; Daphne getting what she has missed all her adult life in the bedroom department.
In their accidental meeting, Johnny tells Daphne that the architect she wants for her daughter has "empty eyes." By the time you realize that no heterosexual male has ever said that of any other heterosexual male, the debate about who's best for Milly is already over. Romantic comedies aren't long on surprises as a rule, but you want the characters to live and breathe for themselves, amid all the narrative machinery.
At one point Keaton's sniffy character refers to Johnny as an unreliable heartbreaker-musician, all wrong for Milly, and he replies: "I love being reduced to a cultural stereotype." The line's from "Annie Hall." It's always nice to be reminded of "Annie Hall," and any film with Keaton has a way of doing so. But out-and-out quotations make it that much harder for "Because I Said So" to establish its own personality. A decade ago Lehmann made "The Truth About Cats and Dogs," and in that similarly hoked-up project he and his cast (especially Janeane Garofalo) managed to redeem all the plot's misunderstandings. Here, it's not just Daphne who can't let go. The whole movie feels pushy.
Because I Said So is a made-to-order romantic comedy of the type "B" variety (that's the one where the heroine is torn between the socially and financially "ideal" guy and the one who really makes her happy). As I have previously written, a formulaic approach is not always a bad thing in a romantic comedy provided the screenplay shows moderate intelligence, the characters are appealing, and there's chemistry between the leads. Fortunately, Because I Said So satisfies these criteria. So, despite being rooted firmly in "chick flick" territory (with a high "cuteness" index), it has the capacity to please to viewers of both genders who appreciate the genre.
The movie starts with a premise that's in Santa Claus territory. Mandy Moore plays Milly, a beautiful, desirable young woman who also happens to be a fantastic cook but who can't find Mr. Right. Like Santa Claus, this person exists only in fantasy since there is no way someone as smart and alluring as Milly is going to be starved for meaningful companionship. However, that's what suspension of disbelief is all about. So I'll give the filmmakers a pass, especially considering that Moore is attractive and appealing and probably more enjoyable to watch than someone who might do a better job filling the part "realistically."
Milly's sisters, Maggie (Lauren Graham) and Mae (Piper Perabo), are happily married and her mother, Daphne (Diane Keaton), is beginning to despair that her third daughter will never find a mate. So, in the best tradition of the Meddling Motion Picture Mother (MMPM), she decides to take matters into her own hands. She runs an Internet classified ad seeking a "life mate" for her daughter then screens the candidates. She finds a clear winner - successful architect Jason (Tom Everett Scott) - and contrives for him to meet Milly. The meeting is successful and they start dating. At the same time, Milly encounters musician Johnny (Gabriel Macht) - who also met Daphne but was found wanting - and begins a relationship with him. She is soon involved with both men and can't figure out how to disentangle herself from either relationship. Jason is the better catch but Milly can be more herself around Johnny.
Because I Said So incorporates a few elements that are not typically given prominence in a standard romantic comedy, the most obvious of which is the MMPM character. Diane Keaton gives depth to what is essentially a stereotype, and this allows her scenes with Moore to have substance. Keaton plays some scenes for laughs (such as when she accidentally logs onto a porn site and can't figure out how to turn down the computer's volume) but there are other times when she illustrates a truth about mother/daughter relationships. The sequence in which Daphne asks her daughter what an orgasm feels like is both funny and touching because there's honesty in the way both Keaton and Moore play it. I also appreciated the sister/sister scenes, although there are too few of them. Both Lauren Graham and Piper Perabo are underused. Milly's two suitors are what they're supposed to be. Although Tom Everett Scott's buttoned-down Jason is destined to lose out, the film doesn't turn him into a villain. As Johnny, Gabriel Macht represents the ideal: sexy, adventurous, a little bohemian, and capable of vulnerability. Meanwhile, Stephen Collins playing Johnny's dad) shows up to allow Daphne to enjoy a little romance of her own.
Based on her performance here, Mandy Moore should do more romantic comedies. This is a genre in which she shines. Given the right male lead and a strong female co-star or two, it's hard to see her appearing in many misses. She has a star quality that has largely been squandered in past efforts. The screenplay for Because I Said So may be short on invention but it is large on heart. It also doesn't overplay the humor. There are would-be funny sequences that don't work (such as the overused montage in which Daphne interviews a bunch of weird dates for her daughter or the scene where Maggie tries to get rid of a suicidal client), but there are enough genuine laughs to keep the material light.
The director is Michael Lehmann, who has strayed far from the cutting edge where he began his career. The man who made the corrosive black comedy Heathers has moved toward the mainstream. At least Because I Said So is an improvement over his previous backfire, 40 Days and 40 Nights. This time, Lehmann has a stronger script and a better cast. Few actresses have aged with grace the way Diane Keaton has and even fewer are capable of playing romantic leads at age 60. It's a testimony to Keaton's appeal that audiences accept her in this role and, while the part isn't as fully developed as in Something's Gotta Give, her presence enriches the proceedings. Because I Said So will work for those it targets and is a pleasant reminder that not all February movies are unbearable.