Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Just Another Romantic Comedy That Doesn't Know What It Really Wants to Do..., September 27, 2007
Apparently "Because I Said So" is a romantic comedy starring Diane Keaton, but definitely it is not "Something's Gotta Give." Nancy Meyers knew what she was doing as the latter's director, who, despite rather predictable ending, provided constant laughs and interesting characters supported by the talented actors. Now "Because I Said So," directed by Michael "Hudson Hawk" Lehmann, gives us one of the most unfunny and annoying comedies of the year.
Diane Keaton plays Daphne, an overprotective mother who, unnecessarily you'd think, worries about the future of her youngest daughter Milly played by Mandy Moore. The meddling mom sets up a date for Milly (without her knowing) with a boy by posting an ad on the net. The officious mother's "comic" turns are accompanied by her inability to handle her PC and her dog doing most embarrassing thing by her side.
Here his film is not only unoriginal, unfunny and irritating, but impossible in more than one way. If your daughter is Mandy Moore, you don't need to "set up" a date. Guys would just keep coming to her, asking for a date. Yes, she sometimes laughs strangely and her mom calls it "a kiss of death," but I find it charming and I believe I'm not the only one to think so. After all, it's Mandy Moore.
And even if you do seek the right person for your daughter and if you do it on the internet, the chances are you meet better candidates for her date than the stereotyped characters assorted here including the one on the short list played by Tom Everett Scott. OK, I know Michael Lehmann did "Heathers," refreshingly dark and original comedy, but that was about 18 years ago.
But perhaps the biggest problem of the film is Diane Keaton herself, whose performance as loopy and overbearing mother failed to charm us. In "Because I Said So" she just keeps annoying us. As if to cover up that fact, the film also contains several slapstick jokes. In one scene Keaton's character is required to do one, a "face in the cake" joke that made me sad. What would Woody Allen say about it? I'd really like to know.
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Water torture, May 28, 2007
"Because I Said So" inhabits a level of the underworld where the neurotic run wild, calm is a four-letter word and one character is more or less identified as "the sister who set the family record for orgasms." It actually sickened me a little. It couldn't be any worse if each DVD came laced with anthrax.
Ostensibly this is a romantic comedy - though it is the opposite of romantic and funny like a shiv to the belly - about a mother and her three daughters, the youngest of which has either rotten taste in men, or rotten luck. The mother is Diane Keaton, while the youngest daughter is Mandy Moore. It should tell you something that Moore is the best thing about the movie.
Building off her mother-as-a-dictator performance in "The Family Stone" Keaton is Daphne, professional loon. She seems to be a baker; she lives in a million-dollar townhouse, so she must traffic angel dust, too. At any rate, she's the kind of mother who, at some point, talks simply for the sensation of mouthing words, dresses like Julie Andrews met Cruella DeVille, cries in proverbial hiccups, psychosomatically loses her voice, and eventually breaks out into song with her three daughters, who occasionally perform doo-wop numbers in front of small audiences of friends, husbands, and rotten men.
Forty years ago, women like this were either put on valium, or put away.
Daphne is borderline incoherent, a manipulator, and such an unhinged, meddling jack lope that she signs her daughter up for an online dating service, then screens the potential suitors. Unbeknowst to Millie (Moore), Daphne has set her up with an architect (Tom Everett Scott) who might be the blandest creep ever committed to celluloid. There's no reason to like him, and he's not interesting enough to hate.
Vying for Millie's affections is a musician (Gabriel Macht). He's also a single father. Occasionally, he moonlights as a saint, teaching kids and idiots to play the guitar. Of course, Millie, a caterer who moonlights as a saint teaching just plain idiots how to cook, sleeps around on the musician for sake of dramatic tension.
Other than be a showcase for Keaton roaring id, it's hard to figure out what "Because I Said So" wanted to do. It apologizes for any number of Millie and Daphne's morally questionable behaviors by chalking up to them being women in love, or heat, as if this somehow makes their choices look better. Directed by Michael Lehman (a long way from "Heathers" or even "Soapdish") it revels in frank, predictable chats about sex. Eventually, the daughters conclude that mom's meddling traces back to her need to get screwed; she's two éclairs short of a dozen because she hasn't been properly stuck in thirty years.
It trades in a bunch of other irritations, too. The musician's kid seems to be autistic; he's constantly screaming or running around like he's been sprung from the bull pit in Pamplona. The song numbers are so obviously lip-synched that you're not even sure what to imagine, nor is it immediately clear what song Daphne and her daughters are even trying to sing.
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46 of 61 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Prepare to have your IQ painfully sucked out of your brain, April 19, 2007
How can a movie get this many elements wrong? Diane Keaton overacts to a painful degree (we've seen her talent in other movies, so we know she is much more capable than this). The writers think that the "comedy" element of "romantic comedy" can be accomplished with silly sight gags like cakes falling on people's heads. The overall plot has one seriously crippling flaw--Mandy Moore's character two-times men to a level in which she's getting engaged to one and considering moving in with another! The viewer is expected to overlook her major indiscretions because she's cute and gets bossed around by her family. The writers would like to have us treat it as if she was going on a few too many dinner dates, not seriously manipulating the lives of two men.
I went with a female friend to see Because I Said So in the theaters because I figured I could handle a slightly silly romantic comedy, and I was willing to overlook minor flaws to get a few good laughs. I had to look long and hard to find redeeming qualities to the movie. Actors Gabriel Macht (as Mandy Moore's loveable, guitar-playing, easy-going romantic boyfriend) and Stephen Collins (as the father of Gabriel Macht's character and a foil to Diane Keaton's mother role) are both outstanding. The other actors have rotten comedic timing or a forceful method that makes the reader cringe instead of laugh. You will laugh at a few sight gags (a balloon stuck to the back of Mandy Moore's dress, anyone?), and Keaton's wardrobe is a stunning marriage of retro and modern stylings, but there is little else to hold this film together.
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