The very title A Lot Like Love is amusing to me because that’s really all I see in this romantic comedy. Throughout the film, Ashton Kutcher and Amanda Peet draw closer and eventually come to something you might describe as a lot like love, but not really it. I don’t think this was intentional on the screenwriter’s part – I think they want us to believe they’re in as much love as love can be. But they’re not.

A Lot Like Love actually comes off more like a weakened version of Before Sunrise/Before Sunset. In the Sunrise/Sunset duo of films we see a day in the life of two people as they meet and then meet again after seven years. I was convinced that there really was something strong going on between them after their single day together.

I was not convinced in A Lot Like Love – and it even gives us more time. Oliver and Emily meet, spend an evening together, and then meet again various random times over the period of the next six years, never for more than a couple days at a time. They can live without each other after each of the encounters, but not after the last one, because that’s the end of the movie! Seriously, we have no real reason to believe that they really can’t live without each other except that this is the end of a rom-com and those are just the rules.

A Lot Like Love should be given a nod for at least trying to rise above traditional rom-coms. Instead of the standard run of sit-com level jokes and gags, Love tries hard to be cute in its circumstances and clever in its dialogue. The problem is, it mostly fails. They way they first notice each other – with Oliver trying to look at Emily without looking at her and Emily staring him down all the while – is cute. The way they first meet – with a sexual encounter in the airplane’s bathroom – is decidedly not cute. Emily updating the Oliver situation over the phone with her friend every five minutes: kinda cute. Emily immediately turning around, after being so concerned about how she comes off to Oliver, and sticking straws up her nose: not cute.

Though in their late twenties, both of these characters constantly act like they’re in they’re early teens. Kutcher manages to pull it off somehow, there’s a certain inexplicable amiability about his presentation that makes him watchable despite his relatively insipid character. Peet, on the other hand, has no such opportunity. Though it seems to be in the name of cuteness, Emily tries to impress us with unnecessary road rage, pettiness and emotional instability. We have no reason to want these two to get together.

I foresee this couple staying together about as long as each of them did with their other relationships. Whatever’s going on between these two, it may be a lot like love, but it’s certainly not love.

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