When you live in Reno, as I do, weekend plans can be pretty slim pickin’s. Last weekend, for example, my options were: an avant-garde play with “experimental lighting and seating” (“That means you’ll be sitting on the floor pointing flashlights at the stage,” a friend explained), or a mainstream romantic comedy at our local movie theater. Since my avant-garde days are long behind me, I opted for the movie – “The Laws of Attraction,” as it’s cleverly called. We weren’t expecting very much, but even so, it managed to be disappointing. Ten minutes in, I decided that we should have gone for the floor-and-flashlights option after all.

Audrey Woods (Julianne Moore) is a neurotic, high-strung New York divorce attorney who’s never lost a case (this we know because the movie tells us so). Daniel Rafferty (Pierce Brosnan) is a free-wheeling, bohemian New York divorce attorney who’s never lost a case (this we know…). When they enter the courtroom to do battle, you can feel the high-stakes tension in the air. And what better way to relieve tension than taking your opposing counsel to bed after a night of heavy drinking? Their booze-soaked fornication, however, merely touches off an intense professional rivalry (which conceals intense mutual longing, naturally). After a year of prickly oneupmanship, they’re reunited on opposite sides of a nasty divorce case – glam rocker Thorne Jamison (Michael Sheen) and his mulleted, white-trash fashion designer wife Serena (Parker Posey). Both celebrities want only one thing: their jointly-owned castle in Ireland. Clearly, Audrey and Daniel must go to Ireland to depose the servants. Obviously, they must repeat their alcoholic errors and get truly smashed at an Irish pub. Inevitably, they have to get married at a wee-hours pub ceremony, and wake up with matching hangovers and cheesy gumball-machine rings. To save face, the movie’s rationale goes, the bickering attorneys must pretend to be married in earnest – little realizing that their sham marriage will bring their true feelings to the surface. Let the madcap hijinks begin!

As plots go, this one is neither original nor inventive, but that isn’t the main problem; after all, we don’t expect much innovation in a romantic comedy. What’s truly disappointing is how Moore and Brosnan – both capable, charismatic actors – are forced to play embarrassingly one-dimensional characters. This is the kind of movie where we know that a character is insecure because she locks herself in a public bathroom and thrusts Hostess Sno-balls into her face. Still, for a movie that’s so fond of telling us things, we never do learn exactly why Brosnan’s character is smitten with Moore’s at first sight (although it’s strongly implied that it’s because of her quirky Weather Channel viewing habits, a theme echoed in the movie’s atrocious final line). At least Posey appears to be having fun with her barefoot-hillbilly role, but Sheen’s heavily eyeshadowed and incoherent punk-rocker – complete with unlikely Sid Vicious accent – is a painful reminder of how culturally out of touch the writer (Aline Brosh McKenna) really is. The dialogue is stiff and awkward, and the lame, genitally-preoccupied jokes hover at about the fifth-grade level (e.g., a spit-take when someone finds out that their drink is called Goat’s Nut. It’s comic gold, people). Fortunately, you can tune out every line and still be able to predict the ending.

A clumsy, dull story without any romance or wit to redeem its tired predictability, “The Laws of Attraction” ought to be slapped with a class-action lawsuit for mental pain and anguish. I just hope that the attorney who represents us suffering viewers is a little more capable – and a little less of a drunken sot – than New York’s top divorce attorneys.



Recommended:
No