Review of Because I Said So (2007) by Markb. — 22 May 2007

Milly's polka-dot dress looks great, and Mandy Moore looks even cuter than usual wearing it in Because I Said So. Take note of this, because talking Milly into buying it for a date is the ONLY piece of good advice that Daphne (Diane Keaton), Milly's psychotic, control-freak mom gives her in the entire movie! Because I Said So is a chick-flick-from-hell (and no, guys, not ALL of them automatically come from the hot place.

They really don't!) that's a uniquely painful experience because every scene, sequence, plot point and gag is so deadeningly, thuddingly secondhand (or thirdhand or fiftiethhand). If a character is lugging around a huge, elaborately designed cake, you automatically know that said pastry won't make it safely to a table without first making a detour straight to someone's face.

If a romantic comedy heroine has to choose between a solid, dependable guy who makes a decent living, and a freewheeling nonconformist who dresses funny and can't control his obnoxiously bratty kid (who informs every woman he meets that she has a vagina--just like in Kindergarten Cop, only that time it was funny) you don't need your Spidey sense to predict that solidness and dependability will come in a distant second.

And in the fine tradition of Must Love Dogs and other interchangeable films of its sorry ilk, you can bet on a "Loser Montage" of highly inappropriate potential matches for the heroine, scored to a golden oldie (The Honey Cone's "Want Ads", and completely missing the point of the song) and teaching the same valuable life lesson we all learned from Sleepless In Seattle, namely that if you've got allergies or funny-looking teeth, you might as well just give up because you're totally unworthy of being loved.

Even the aforementioned polka-dot dress bit in which Milly swears up and down that she won't be caught dead in it--and then, presto!--is predicated on a beyond-trite editing gag common to countless bad movie comedies (and roughly every third episode of Gilligan's Island).

Further evidence that director Michael Lehmann (40 Days and 40 Nights), who once shocked and delighted us with the groundbreaking black comedy Heathers before completely blowing his wad with the expensive turkey Hudson Hawk, has thrown in the towel, Because I Said So has two genuine virtues: the year's best movie title so far and a typically delightful performance by Moore, who seems to be under the impression that to get our attention she doesn't have to monopolize the tabloids and the Internet in the manner of the Britneys, Lindsays and Parises.

..she just needs to do onscreen work that never disappoints; she was a lot of fun playing unsympathetic comic foils in American Dreamz and Saved! but was equally good in such straightforward films as the moving, Christian-themed romantic drama A Walk To Remember.

Here, too, Moore is engaging and enjoyable to watch, lending her role a freshness and spontaneity that triumphs over her material, even the horse laugh that's directly cribbed from Sandra Bullock in Miss Congeniality and forced on her.

Yes, you say, but what about Diane Keaton? Well, given the virtually unplayable meddling mom she's taken on, I suppose she's more bearable in it than, say, Rosie O'Donnell or Roseanne Barr would be, but it's still a shameful career low.

Peter Biskind and other critics of 1980s American movies like to claim that artistic expression took a dive in that decade as maverick directors gave way to superproducers like Simpson/ Bruckheimer and even Lucas/ Spielberg, but they usually fail to note that careers such as Keaton's provided some welcome exceptions to the general trend.

Keep in mind that in the 1980s, Keaton frequently worked in such challenging and not always commercially viable dramas as Reds, Mrs. Soffel and The Good Mother...and while the occasional frothy flick like Baby Boom occasionally made its way onto the plate, it didn't comprise the entire meal.

Think of Keaton's career over the past 15 years and at best you recall Something's Gotta Give; at the most aggrssively mediocre you think of the two Father of the Bride remakes...and at rock bottom there's this.