Like its male lead, this romantic comedy has a modest degree of dopey charm going for it, but beyond that, it’s pretty ho-hum.
The eminently eyeable Ashton Kutcher and Amanda Peet portray a pair of Urban Outfitter-ed twen-tysomethings who take seven years to figure out what the audience grasps the moment these two first get it on inside an airplane lavatory: They’re soulmates. So what’s the holdup on the hookup? Well, for one thing, Ashton’s cuddly cute Oliver has dreams of making mad stacks in the brave new world of cyberspace (the action begins midway through Clinton’s second term), and alterna-girl Emily (Peet) wants to marry Slash or, at least, a reasonable facsimile. She’s a free spirit who wouldn’t deign give some strange stiff she shagged in a mile-high john her digits because that, as she’ll repeatedly admonish throughout the story, would “ruin it.” So she takes his number and promises to drop him a line someday.
Over the next seven years their paths cross again and again, as he morphs into a dapper dot-commer, and she a budding Annie Leibovitz. Alas, they also harbor an almost pathological aversion to open communication lines and as a result keep slipping in and out of each other’s lives. While the characters travel down this hopelessly meandering road, director Nigel Cole and writer Colin Patrick Lynch roll out some romanticomic chestnuts that make “A Lot Like Love” feel an awful lot like a lot of other movies. The ultimate homage/rip-off comes when a lovesick Oliver pulls a “Say Anything” and sets up shop outside Emily’s place, serenading her with a lame Bon Jovi power ballad. Therein lies the big difference between a run-of-the-mill flick like “A Lot Like Love,” and Cameron Crowe’s 1989 classic: Lloyd Dobler would never do Bon Jovi. (Rated PG-13 for sexual content, nudity and language. Running time: 107 minutes
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 22, 2005. Read the original PDF.