I’m almost embarrassed to admit I saw an advance screening of A Lot Like Love, a new Ashton Kutcher - Amanda Peet romantic comedy opening tomorrow. It was far better than most Kutcher flicks. (In the spirit of full disclosure, I missed a good chunk of the beginning because, ahem, previews don’t start two hours late like red-carpet premieres where the desi lead fails to turn up.)
Presumably I got the pass, which came via a desi arts list, because a desi plays a main character. Kal Penn plays Jeeter, Ashton Kutcher’s dot-com coworker in avant-garde lenses, and does a great job: he’s charismatic and fluent, drives a hot car, picks up cute women and offers Kutcher tips. It’s as if the Van Wilder roles had been reversed, and indeed this would’ve been a much better movie with Penn in the lead.
The story resembles Boys and Girls, a wooden Freddie Prinze Jr. - Claire Forlani collaboration which, like Golden Gate, I liked mainly for its Berkeley backdrop. Kutcher plays Ollie, a dot-com type who’s inarticulate, obsessed with work and toys with his female fling like a yo-yo. You can never truly suspend disbelief with these movies because, hello, Peet and Forlani are gorgeous.
The script was written with diversity in mind: a major deaf character is played unremarkably, there’s a black priest, the movie uses the ‘burbs rather than New York. And it’s even kind to those in persistent vegetative states. Dumping on Ashton Kutcher’s thespian handicaps is all too easy, so I’ll just say this: Kutcher is the true heir to the Terry Schiavo school of acting. Kutcher makes Keanu Reeves look like Ben Kingsley. Kutcher alternates between two expressions, blank and blank. Kutcher speaks in two tones, dumb and stammering. Kutcher is the latest in a long line of brainless, cardboard male leads such as Dermot Mulroney in, oh, just about everything. Kutcher’s acting never rose above That ’70s Show, and that goes for Topher Grace too. Ok, I’ll stop now.
Kutcher tells a sophomoric joke in the middle of the movie while sitting in a graveyard. The joke involves burying a goldfish. It’s such a stupid joke, it felt like the screenwriter was purposely making fun of his lead, because that’s about the level of complexity which this guy can handle. Ok, I’m really stopping now.
In contrast, Peet, who usually plays the beautiful shrew, actually does a decent job as the long-suffering love interest. The cinematography is surprisingly beautiful, the music is wailing alt-rock sadness, the concept is decent as a light comedy. The whole movie is just a miscarriage of casting.
Watch the trailer if you want, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.
