WHAT’S IT LIKE?
Teacher Sarah (Diane Lane) and boat-builder Jake (John Cusack) are both newly single.
Without permission, their interfering friends and family set them up with each other through a dating website.
Their first date is strained and things are further complicated when she falls for the charming father of a pupil (Dermot Mulroney).
Torn between two possible lovers, will fate help Sarah make the right choice?
WHAT’S IT LIKE?
This is a real mixed bag. It has as much going for it – in terms of originality and wit – as against it – in terms of predictability and corniness.
Unusually for a bog-standard rom-com, it tantalises with the possibility of two suitable suitors, but chickens out, by turning one of them into a creep, out of the blue.
Cusack’s reliable charm elicits some unexpected belly laughs, but the film bursts with predictable sentimentality.
Regrettably, among the rom-com cliches, it features a cutesy song-and-dance number, round the dinner table, just half an hour in.
Creatively, it ends on a low, with an incongruous and irrelevant “race-against-the-clock” denouement, which undoes any good work that’s preceded it.
If you like warm, traditional, safe and amiably cute romantic humour, it’s a harmless enough way to spend an hour and a half, but if you prefer a sharper, more refined approach to your comedy, you’d get more satisfaction from walking your dog.