Lately, for reasons I'd rather not get into (after all this is a movie review site and not my personal blog), I haven't been in the mood for a lot of 'romantic comedy.' I actually had no plans to see this one but my friend Kiera wanted to go and I do like John Cusack. So I went and was pleasantly surprised.

Must Love Dogs is the story of two recently divorced thirty or early forty-somethings who resort to the Internet to help them get back into the dating game. Sarah (Diane Lane) is a kindergarten teacher with a penchant for eating dinner alone every night while standing over the sink. Her concerned family actually stages an intervention for her where everyone brings a photo of a potential date. Then her sister Claire (Elizabeth Perkins) takes matters into her own meddling hands by posting an ad for her Sarah on Perfect Match.com. After a series of disastrous dates including one where she ends up meeting her dad (Christopher Plummer), she meets Jake (John Cusack). Jake, is also recently divorced with a penchant for eating his dinner alone every night while watching the bittersweet romance, Dr. Zhiavago. Of course, the road to true love is never easy and their date ends in disaster. Nevertheless, Jake is immediately smitten. Meanwhile, Sarah, despite her own objections ends up also falling for Bob (Dermot Mulroney), the recently separated father of one of her students.

I enjoyed both Cusack and Lane in this. Both actors bring a maturity and an intelligence to their roles that naturally make their characters more interesting. The problem is that they spend a lot of time apart. So we end up with a few scenes of sizzle, but a lot more scenes of fizzle. Jake spends most of his time pining away over Sarah with his best friend and Sarah spends most of her time just pining away with her big extended family. The longer these two were apart the more tedious the rest of the film became.

While I love Cusack, it was Lane who held the film together. John simply wasn't on screen enough to do that. I like Diane Lane as an actress and I appreciate her as a woman who is beautifully 40 and hasn't succumbed to the Hollywood pressure to be nipped and tucked and sucked and plucked until her skin is so tight it has to scream "Uncle". She brought a believability to her character that would have been lacking in a lesser actress.

Must Love Dogs rates very low on the Shaun-o-meter (named after my ex-boyfriend who has absolutely no tolerance for chick flicks and prefers movie that include at least two of the following: sports, car chases, explosions, lots of action sequences and at least a sprinkling of half-naked women). So if you must see Must Love Dogs, see it with another girlfriend or rent it on one of those evenings when you are home alone and in need of a little pity party (something of which I know nothing about).