Must Love Dogs

"A love so real it still hurts after you're dead - that's all I want," claims the Dr Zhivago-obsessed Jake (Cusack). Recently divorced, sensitive Jake is the ideal partner for 40-something pre-school teacher Sarah (Lane), although it takes a rather misleading internet ad posted by Sarah's sister Carol (Perkins) to get them together. Jake's blend of romantic whimsy and rigorous honesty then pushes Sarah away, right into the arms of smarmy philanderer Bob (Mulroney), and so we enter the parallel universe of the Hollywood romantic comedy, in which characters struggle to overcome the kind of obstacles that wouldn't stub a toe in the real world. Adapted from Claire Cook's novel by director Goldberg, the script has some winning moments - "He has a PhD and a great ass. Let's not get bogged down by ethics" - but this is a predictable tale that trades far too heavily, albeit in a tongue-in-cheek fashion, on Cusack's previous on-screen incarnations as a doomed loser in love. The highlight is Lane's performance; unafraid to let her lines and wrinkles show, the real-life 40-something allows the scared and vulnerable reality behind Sarah's kooky exterior to come through in subtle, well-judged moments. She and Cusack don't get to share enough screen-time, however, and while it's nice to see Hollywood offering women who've actually matured beyond adolescence a role or two for a change, Must Love Dogs ends up patronising its potential audience by having its characters indulge in little else other than obsessing about how best to get back into a man's orbit.