In the immortal words of Dave Barry
“One of life’s great pleasures is watching a really good critic tee off on a really bad movie.”
Barry gave that as part of his back-of-the-book quote for Roger Ebert’s I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie, an invaluable collection of reviews he’s written about bad films.
His review of “A Lot Like Love” is a sure candidate for a sequel to this volume (hey, his Great Movies II just came out this year…). He really putts the movie into the water hazard.
And I take a smug pride, the kind that will almost certainly go before a fall if I’m not careful, in thinking to myself that the words he uses to describe its characters will never be used to describe mine.
“A Lot Like Love” is a romance between two of the dimmer bulbs of their generation. Judging by their dialogue, Oliver and Emily have never read a book or a newspaper, seen a movie, watched TV, had an idea, carried on an interesting conversation or ever thought much about anything. The movie thinks they are cute and funny, which is embarrassing, like your uncle who won’t stop with the golf jokes.”
Go read, enjoy.
