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God save this comedy
Laws of Attraction is a dull and dreadful romantic comedy about two warring attorneys who predictably fall in love.
Film: Laws of Attraction
Director: Peter Howitt
Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Julianne Moore
If you love Pierce Brosnan in his James Bond avatar, and if you think Julianne Moore was awesome in Stephen Daldry's The Hours, do yourself and the stars a favour by staying away from this dull and dreadful romantic comedy about two warring attorneys who predictably fall in love.
This slow-burn movie, tedious even within its 90 minutes of playing time, is the worst form of disservice done to the actors who participate in the wry rites of romanticism.
From the moment we encounter Audrey (Moore), bustling around with a secret camera, taking pictures in a mansion to get a woman her alimony loot, we know what director Peter Howitt has in store. He wants to make his protagonists unpleasantly attractive.
Howitt's earlier films, particularly Sliding Doors, exuded scented sensuality. Laws Of Attraction is plainly decadent in mood. The situations created in the plot are so mawkish, you want to throttle the people who thought it could ever be amusing to see Brosnan and Moore getting drunk and jumping into bed...and waking up in dreadful embarrassment the morning after.
The joke is encored when in Ireland, the couple gets tipsy, goes through local marriage rituals and awakens to a new dawn.
Every sunrise in the scriptwriter's intellect is a new occasion for tedium and exasperation. Just what were the makers of this trite film thinking when they sat down to make Laws Of Attraction?
To cast Brosnan as a fading lover boy and Moore as a prim middle-aged neurotic lover girl seems like a good idea to begin with. The two could have been as funny as Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy in their best romantic comedies.
Alas, there's absolutely no chemistry between Brosnan and Moore. As they fight in court and bedroom, all we can think of is what the heck are the two doing together. Besides trying to be sassy and satirical and miserable.
The silver lining, if you stay up long enough, is a divorcing couple played by Michael Sheen and Parker Posey. Playing a debauched rock star and his whining wife, they live up to every stereotype associated with the showbiz world and yet provide some entertaining moments - something that our lead pair is unable to do.
But, of course, Brosnan and Moore are opposing attorneys in the rock star's divorce proceedings. How could we miss the obvious in the search for a deeper meaning? Laws Of Attraction doesn't provide the luxury of looking beyond the surface.
Both the lead actors are awfully strained and unappetising. What were Pierce Brosnon and Julianne Moore thinking of when they signed this potentially disastrous film? Apart from the zeroes on the cheque, that is.
The best performance comes from Sara Miller as Moore's feisty age-retarding mom who hates being called mom in public. A potentially grotesque stereotype, the character floats freely to the surface of this film's boggy ambience. The rest of the cast simply sinks.
God save the romantic comedy!
