PREMIERE.COM'S REVIEW (posted 7/29/05)

It’s somehow fitting that this purported romantic comedy about dating is, like most dates, clumsy, endless, and absolutely excruciating. Unlike most dates, it includes the participation of two attractive and generally interesting people. But the complete lack of chemistry, rhythm, or wit in the film makes the viewer, like an unwilling blind date, wonder just how much damage she can inflict on herself with a ballpoint pen before the whole miserable affair ends.

Diane Lane and John Cusack, the generally reliable actors at the center of the film, stumble their way through an overloaded script that began as mediocre chick lit about a divorced woman whose rambling Irish family wants her securely coupled up, and a bland boat builder who woos her with a Westie and his crooked grin. Director Gary David Goldberg, whose sole previous feature film credit was the Ted Danson starrer Dad, has had success creating the TV series Family Ties and Spin City. He should have stayed on the small screen, as he seems completely ignorant of the principles of comic timing for films, or the theory that a group of actors supposedly playing a family should act like they’ve met before.

The film has its appealing moments: Cusack cutely mooning over Doctor Zhivago, Lane saucily snapping at her butcher. And supporting work from Elizabeth Perkins and Glenn Howerton, as two of Lane’s character’s numberless siblings, is sharp and funny, although the naturally grumpy Christopher Plummer is mercilessly misused as the twinkly Irish patriarch. But by the time Dogs reaches its creative nadir, an impromptu rendition of the theme song from The Partridge Family performed during dinner in a mobile home, it’s already squandered whatever goodwill the cast had stacked up. Leaden pacing, flat jokes, and a romantic subplot so obviously telegraphed that the Newfoundland could see it coming add up to an hour and 40 minutes of punishment.—Sara Brady