Must Love Dogs: Critic Reviews

This is a movie of fake conflict, fake heart, even fake doggy love.

Must Love Dogs is an Internet dating comedy so weightless that it makes a trifle like You've Got Mail look like Chekhov.

Director Gary David Goldberg has said he gave the script to Cusack to add his own touches, resulting in some clever and engaging repartee with Diane Lane, another intelligent and likable actor.

Stands as yet another example of how easy it is for filmmakers to fail at romantic comedy.

Thanks to its splendid lead players, Must Love Dogs has the affable, cuddly charm that its title so hopefully invokes.

While Lane is her typical winning self, the film is mawkish.

That's it. I'm divorcing Diane Lane.

Did Lane and John Cusack really have to put themselves through this? Here are two first-rate actors in the embarrassing situation of playing blithering misfits in a lame comedy of errors.

The latest installment in film's ongoing habit of hooking itself up, Iditarod-like, to man's best friend for a little uplift in the adorability department.

Must Love Dogs is like a puppy with big brown eyes and a wagging tail who weeps with eagerness to lick your hand, but you take a look around the pound and decide to adopt the sad-eyed beagle who looks as if she has seen a thing or two.

Must Love Dogs, though, has some things a lot of today's romantic comedies don't have and need badly: smart dialogue, bright characters and a pair of lovers who don't look as if they belong at a college bash or in a gossip column.

On what planet does Diane Lane, she of the double-dip-sundae bod, whipped-cream face, and cinnamon hair, go dateless? Only on planet Hollywood, where she is routinely cast as an underappreciated wife or overlooked single.

Must Love Dogs proves that you can teach an old genre new tricks.

Must Love Dogs is a film that won't inspire love or hate. It's just sort of there: An inoffensive way to spend an evening. Just remember, you can't get those 107 minutes of your life back.

Even when it doesn't entirely succeed, Goldberg's literate screenplay has an old-fashioned, almost preternaturally classy vibe.

Diane Lane and John Cusack have such terrific chemistry together in the genial romantic comedy Must Love Dogs that it's a wonder these two veteran performers have never been teamed before.

It's OK to be retro with your screen romance, but retro shouldn't feel this inept.

The real reason for taking a chance on this minor summer confection would be to catch up on the life of an unbilled hero: Lloyd Dobler.

Be warned. When the makers of Must Love Dogs want you to like somebody, they slam your hand in a drawer until you say uncle.

It's ostensibly about adults, but there's nothing remotely adult about it.

Bland and forgettable -- a romantic comedy with affable characters and some funny lines, but where love never really takes flight. It fizzles when it should sizzle.

A thoroughly conventional romantic comedy with all the usual trimmings.

Just when you think you have Goldberg figured, he springs fresh surprises.

It takes Lane, John Cusack, Dermot Mulroney, Elizabeth Perkins, Stockard Channing and Christopher Plummer and forces them to reenact the entire unabridged Encyclopedia of Treasured Romantic Comedy Cliches and Chestnuts, Revised Second Edition.