Still, the movie puts a smart start onto seven years of on-again/off-again romance. Having bid adieu to her beau at LAX, Peet spots new guy Kutcher in the airport lounge. Soon after boarding their flight to New York, she proceeds to board clueless Kutcher in the airplane bathroom. In the years following their initial goodbye, set against the familiar backdrop of the Brooklyn Bridge, they reunite periodically—just as "friends," of course—for a playful poke. At each rendezvous, their easy chemistry becomes harder for us to buy. It takes more, after all, than one aimless road trip and mutual griping over exes to cement a bond, even if the bonders in question are endowed with excellent bone structure.
Equally forced is the interaction between Kutcher and his deaf brother (Tyrone Giordano), which is supposed to make the lunk seem lovable. (Haven't the Farrelly brothers already beat this device to death?) Love also wastes Kal Penn (Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle) in the malnourished role of Kutcher's partner in, get this, an online diaper sales business. (Here the Farrelly brothers might've been useful to generate some poopy laughs.)
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With his trademark goofiness dialed down to tolerable levels (he's less a human golden retriever than usual), Kutcher makes a decent, if decidedly bland, romantic lead. Peet (Melinda and Melinda) is her usual brainy, neurotic self—until the script smothers her with a sillier, needier temperament. Even Menand would concede that they photograph well together, but that seems to be their sole qualification for on-screen coupledom.
Love's early scenes in New York sweetly capture the self-consciousness of two people trying, as Kutcher says, to get their "ducks in a line" and figure out who they are. Well, you can't herd ducks. Love soon gets lost in genre strictures and arbitrary obstacles before its inevitable outcome. Peet keeps rejecting other suitors because they have the audacity not to be Kutcher. Strange, since it's a trait many women would consider a virtue. (PG-13) NEAL SCHINDLER
Madison
Opens Fri., April 22, at Meridian and others
SW's distinguished former hydroplane critic Kenan Block once noted the crucial two questions faced by the Seattle hydro-race fan: Who's winning? And who cares? The point is to sit in the sun and get hammered.
Unless you are one die-hard fan—a foaming hydrophile—you'll need many beers to enjoy this partly-set-in-Seattle hydro epic, which has apparently been gathering dust since 2001. Director William Bindley (auteur of the basketball movie Loose Balls) is a ham-handed hack who can't fit bits of film together into a story to save his life, not even when he has a marvelously talented and appealing cast. He sure does here. Climbing down off the cross, Mount Vernon's Jim Caviezel utterly convinces as Jim McCormick, a thwarted coulda-been-a-contender who's given up racing to be a good dad and air-conditioner repairman in his dying hometown, Madison, Ind. He's crazy about his wife, Bonnie (Mary McCormack), who wants to move to a bigger-bucks job in the big city, and crazier still about his adorable son (Jake Lloyd).
Miss Madison, the town's community-owned hydroplane, is in bad shape, worse than the bypassed port town itself. Can she ever get back in the water again, race in Chicago and Seattle, attract the 1971 Gold Cup to Madison, and beat the snooty rich corporate types who make Miss Budweiser the unbeatable Godzilla of America's favorite white-trash sport? Can she ever! All it takes is pluck, luck, the passion of the air-conditioner repairman, the yearning of one son whose faith is sorely tested, the most inertly clichéd script you ever saw, and some brilliant actors (Brent Briscoe as Jim's second-banana crewman and Bruce Dern as his grizzled old genius of a boat mechanic) humiliatingly slumming instead of starring in smart indie movies as they should.
The small-town atmosphere is nice, the acting nuanced and naturalistic, and the climactic race worth cheering for. Maybe your tolerance for schmaltz exceeds my own, and you'll experience Rocky- or Breaking Away–style satisfactions instead of the Days of Thunder slumber that seized me. Just keep a coolerful of Miss Budweiser's sponsor on hand in the likelier event that Madison makes you yearn for bubbly oblivion. (PG) TIM APPELO
