Because I Said So

Because I Said So (Michael Lehmann, 2007 ) - D+

My least favorite kind of romantic comedy: the kind where everyone is completely insane. Diane Keaton's character, who obsesses over her daughter's love life to the point of placing personal ads for her and screening potential suitors, and then showing up at her house before her dates, simply needs to be institutionalized; the daughter, played by the (still gorgeous and radiant) Mandy Moore, seems to have zero qualms about dating two people at once while trying to decide which she wants to ditch. The most interesting thing is the way antiquated notions of relationships sort of track each other: the man Mandy Moore's mother finds for her happens to be a vaguely chauvinist asshole, insisting on ordering for her from restaurant menus, and essentially telling her not to think so much. But that little thematic nugget is buried under 100 minutes of unfunny hysteria; there's also the small matter that both Tom Everett Scott and Gabriel Macht are like twice as old as Mandy Moore (her mom's okay with this?), and the question of what Piper Perabo is doing in a role with about a dozen lines, most of them about sex.