How did this happen?
Diane Keaton takes a bad misstep in “Because I Said So,” but her record promises
recovery. She has, after all, made more than 50 movies, directed 10, and
produced 9. Of these, many are good, and some are memorable. So she can be
forgiven for this one thoroughly mediocre movie.
How did this
happen? Director Michael Lehmann gets much of the blame for not taming Keaton’s
exaggerated performance, and writers Karen Leigh Hopkins and Jessie Nelson get
the rest for writing an inexcusably unfunny script for this comedy. But
unfortunately, it is Keaton herself who drowns the film in excess. Because there
are so few good lines here, it seems the actress felt she had to overdo every
gesture and expression to create comedy where there is none.
This is all
about Daphne, an overzealous mother of three attractive daughters, one of whom
is still unmarried. Mom puts an ad in a personals column and interviews a slew
of toxic applicants. Imagine how funny it might have been if each had made just
a giveaway slip here or there. The process cries out for subtlety.
We meet two
potential Mr. Rights in the same scene: Johnny (Gabriel Macht), a musician who
has all the right instincts and teaches music to children, and Jason (Tom
Everett Scott), a polished, successful architect, who says all the right things
and is over-obviously a complete jerk. His excess sucks any suspense right out
of the movie. Credit Gabriel Macht with a calm performance that makes Johnny a
sympathetic guy. In this movie, that’s a victory.
Daphne is
supposed to be a clothes horse, which is defined here by a series of four inch
belts in many colors, always cinched breast-high, like the men in the ‘50s who
wore their pants up near their armpits. Daphne spends her days shopping with her
daughters while talking about sex and the imperative of marriage for Milly.
Mandy Moore succeeds in a restrained performance as Milly. Lauren Graham, a good
television actress is given little to do and often just stares into space in the
absence of lines.
In one good
speech Daphne sums up the adult child problem: “It’s an impossible love; it’s
fine to bathe you and dress you and teach you to walk, and then when you’re
walking toward a cliff, I’m supposed to just watch you go.” Delivered in a high
pitched howl, it loses its punch.
When Keaton
finds a man of her own and simultaneously loses her voice, she becomes normal
again for a few minutes before plunging into a ludicrous love scene. So now we
have a caricature of an overbearing mother; we have Mr. Arrogant and Mr.
Authentic. What we don’t have is a decent script or a director who should have
yelled, “Tone it down!” Woody Allen would never have allowed this kind of thing.
And so there we sit in this silly movie, wondering whatever happened to the
wondrous Annie Hall.
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