A Lot Like Love: Critic Reviews

A Lot Like Love is a lot like a romantic comedy, except that all that's keeping these two kids apart is the trivially insufferable movie they're in.

Ashton Kutcher and Amanda Peet star as a would-be couple in a pleasant romantic comedy without arty aspirations or low-brow yucks.

Love's life is in its leads and some fairly crisp pacing.

A lot like love? Hardly. Would you believe, maybe, a little like mild indifference?

The producers of this stillborn romantic comedy are betting there are many more college girls than there are testy movie critics, and they're doubtless correct.

The chemistry between diaper salesman Ashton Kutcher and photo hound Amanda Peet is so off that the pairing scans as an alienation effect.

Kutcher is a master of the satisfied grin. It's one of his two expressions, the other being the goofy, ear-to-ear smile, which often follows or precedes his satisfied grin.

It's a lot like a waste of time.

We're supposed to feel that they're made for each other, in the When Harry Met Sally vein, but we never feel the chemistry.

It's a lot like a romantic comedy, except that it's not remotely romantic or even mildly funny.

The movie is 95 minutes long, and neither character says a single memorable thing. You've heard of being too clever by half? Ollie and Emily are not clever enough by three-quarters.

Most offensive are not these ridiculous and contrived rendezvous, but the notion that from them is supposed to come a true friendship, one that may or may not slip into the big l-o-v-e.

Rare for a rom-com in the age of e-mail, director Nigel Cole (Calendar Girls) is more interested in physical than verbal repartee.

The bottom line in any teen date movie is: Do they make a cute couple? Actually, cute is what they do best.

A Lot Like Love is about fairly average if absurdly cute people who develop a relationship over a period of seven years. Sound exciting? You're right, it's not.

It's a beguiling little romance that moves ahead with a smart, refreshing charm.

A lot like any number of romantic comedies, but there should always be room for another good one.

In not one but two scenes we are asked to laugh because the actors have inserted objects into their nostrils. Request denied.

Just when you despair that a whole generation could grow up without a decent date movie, without a romantic comedy that works well enough to call its own, Ashton Kutcher goes and surprises you.

A Lot Like Love is a lot like many other movies of the rom-com ilk, in that we are left with absolutely no doubt about the outcome.

Too often, the script collapses into what feels like improvisation, in which the characters find a kind of common ground: Infantilism.

This is the kind of movie where the lovers don't have to worry about fate keeping them apart -- all they do is manufacture excuses not to be together, because if they didn't, you wouldn't have a movie.

A pleasant little romantic comedy that doesn't try too hard and has the virtue of doing a few things differently.

What Lynch strenuously avoids is any examination of who these two individuals are, how the passage of time affects them and what could possibly draw them back together given that neither one of them is a walk in the park.

A lot like a lot of other romantic comedies.