THE OBJECT OF MY AFFECTION (20th Century Fox) Starring: Jennifer Aniston, Paul Rudd, John Pankow, Allison Janney, Alan Alda, Nigel Hawthorne, Amo Gulinello, Tim Daly, Steve Zahn. Screenplay: Wendy Wasserstein, based on the novel by Stephen McCauley. Producer: Laurence Mark. Director: Nicholas Hytner. MPAA Rating: R (profanity, adult themes) Running Time: 110 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
As I sat watching THE OBJECT OF MY AFFECTION, all I could think was: here is a romantic comedy for everyone who applauded when MY BEST FRIEND'S WEDDING ended with Julia Roberts dancing with Ruppert Everett. I'm not about to delve into the sociology or psychology of friendships between women and gay male pals, but apparently it has achieved a status as part of the urban American zeitgeist. Still...a mainstream romantic comedy about two people whose primary similarity is that they're both attracted to men?
I have to give THE OBJECT OF MY AFFECTION credit for tackling the subject at all. I just can't give it much credit for tackling the subject effectively. The principal characters are a pair of community-minded New Yorkers, social worker Nina (Jennifer Aniston) and school teacher George (Paul Rudd). When George is dumped by his long-time boyfriend (Tim Daly), he takes a room with Nina, a woman he met just days earlier at a party. George's presence complicates Nina's relationship with her boyfriend Vince (John Pankow), but things get even more complicated when Nina discovers that she is pregnant. Though she decides she wants to keep the baby, she wants a better father than Vince for her child. What she wants, she decides, is George.
Why she decides she wants George is another question entirely. In fact, why Nina wants anything is up for debate. There is no character there, nothing which gives us clue why she does what she does, or what it is in her life that makes George such an appealing alternative to Vince. The perky Aniston can do adorable and wistful in her sleep...and in this case, she might as well have been. Though Rudd fills in a few blanks with a pleasant, appropriately confused performance -- working wonders with the well-handled moment in which he actually responds to Nina's physical attentions -- George and Nina's friendship never feels genuine. It's just a plot device set up so two attractive people can get into wacky and farcical situations.
Actually, not all that wacky and farcical at all, as it turns out. Between Nicholas Hytner's direction and Wendy Wasserstein's script, THE OBJECT OF MY AFFECTION almost never feels like a comedy. The story is too serious by half, full of tearful or angry confrontations and sincere speeches, with the pregnancy sub-plot a terribly ill-advised decision. Hytner, meanwhile, can never create a consistent comic rhythm to buoy the narrative. Every edit feels jarring, slamming scenes one into the other rather than letting them build to humorous high points. Wasserstein metes out the giggles between the most gratuitous uses of the "f"-word since the last romantic comedy starring a "Friends" cast member (KISSING A FOOL), with everyone involved taking the issues too seriously to bother making them funny.
All the emphasis on longing and misapplied affection at least provides a nice role for Nigel Hawthorne, who worked with Hytner on THE MADNESS OF KING GEORGE. As a theater critic unrequitedly infatuated with a young actor (Amo Gulinello), Hawthorne actually makes the film's themes momentarily poignant as he ponders facing his later years alone. Yet even that bright spot further emphasizes THE OBJECT OF MY AFFECTION as a romantic comedy which isn't particularly romantic or particulalry comedic. It's really a half-hearted stab at teasing the same social conventions CHASING AMY successfully trampled all over. After all the soul searching about the lines between friendship, love and sex, it comes to the safe conclusion that like likes like. And just to be even safer, it throws a bone to everyone who came to see the female protagonist dancing at a wedding with her gay male pal.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 indirect OBJECTs: 4.
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