ADDICTED TO LOVE
A film review by David N. Butterworth
Copyright 1997 David N. Butterworth/The Summer Pennsylvanian
Rating: ** (maltin scale)
Appealing actors alone do not a romantic comedy make. The genre defines a film that is light, charming, and cute. While "Addicted to Love" is certainly all of those things to a degree, and *does* offer the charismatic Meg Ryan and Matthew Broderick, for some reason it's missing that magical spark that puts it in the same league as, say, "When Harry Met Sally..."
When his girlfriend Linda (Kelly Preston) jilts him for a French restarauteur, Sam (Broderick) heads for the big city to try and win her back. Sam, an astronomer by profession, holes up in an abandoned building across the alley from his ex and rigs up an elaborate camera obscura to spy on her. This fantastical device, constructed from bits and pieces from the office, projects fuzzy images of his former lover's comings and goings onto the whitewashed walls of his hideout like a big screen TV. Clearly he made the wrong career choice somewhere down the line; few private investigators get this good a look at their quarry.
When an unwelcome visitor, Maggie (Ryan) drops in on Sam's stakeout, it's soon clear why. This guy Anton (Tcheky Karyo) that Linda is, er, seeing, is Maggie's ex. Et voila! Maggie's contributions to the surveillance operation include a cactus--quirky--and a number of strategically-placed microphones, which pick up every sigh, gasp, and moan from the neighboring love loft.
Sam and Maggie's voyeuristic goals are very different, however. Sam is gathering data in a scientific attempt to chart Linda and Anton's inevitable break-up. For the star-struck Sam, Linda's condition is just a passing phase, like a new moon. Maggie, on the other hand, simply wants to exact revenge.
The contrivances of the script are mostly predictable (letting cockroaches loose in a restaurant, for example), although it is amusing hearing Anton explain to Linda why he smells like expensive perfume, or has lipstick on his collar. "Why would I have sex with ze hamburger when I can make love to ze steak?" gasps Anton in his defense. Maggie and Sam grimace more than usual during that interpersonal exchange.
At one point the film turns into "Mystery Science Theater 3000," with a tipsy Ryan and Broderick sitting in for the wise-cracking robots, dubbing the muted lines of their rivals with much wit and pathos. Less charming is Maureen Stapleton's character, who shows up for five minutes simply to tell Ryan "your tits look like rocks." And frankly, Broderick is starting to lose some of that puppy-ish charm that has worked so well for him in the past.
"Love can sometimes be a very difficult thing," begins Linda's 'Dear John' letter to Sam early on in the picture. Watching "Addicted to Love" can be occasionally tedious, but it's not without its moments.
-- David N. Butterworth dnb@mail.med.upenn.edu
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews