BY LAURA MILLER Addicted to Love
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"Addicted" tests how far Matthew Broderick and Meg Ryan can get beyond cute. although it treats of such bilious subjects as obsessive jealousy, stalking and revenge, Griffin Dunne's "Addicted to Love" isn't a black comedy, exactly; call it gray. Its main attraction is the novelty of seeing the ordinarily kittenish Meg Ryan ride a motorcycle, swagger around in full leathers and say mean things to Matthew Broderick. Broderick plays Sam, a gentle astronomer whose childhood sweetheart, Linda (Kelly Preston), runs off to New York City and the arms of Anton (Tcheky Karyo), a French restaurateur. Sam follows and sets up an observatory of sorts in a derelict building across the street from the apartment she shares with her new love -- complete with a camera obscura device that projects a life-sized image of the cooing pair onto the wall. Subsisting on beef jerky and Twinkies, he collects copious data on their domestic bliss, from the configuration of her smiles (teeth or no teeth) to how many times they feed each other. His dubious theory: The couple are on the verge of a break-up, and he'll be there to catch Linda when it comes. Ryan plays Maggie, the Frenchman's ex-fiancée, hell-bent for vengeance, who insists on joining forces with Sam when she discovers his lair. "When I get done with him, he'll be a twitching little stain on the floor," she growls, describing her plans for Anton. Screenwriter Robert Gordon has gifted Ryan's character with a surly, profane wit ("The only way that girl is coming back to you is if a blast of semen catapults her across the street"). She's meant to balance Broderick's small-town sweetness with a cavalier, downtown cynicism, but she doesn't amount to more than a cuddly, diluted version of the feral icon created by Madonna in "Desperately Seeking Susan." Ryan just doesn't seem capable of serious ruthlessness. "Welcome to New York, spyboy," she snarls at Broderick, yet there's no real teeth in it. She's Manhattan Lite; call it Boston. "Addicted to Love" skates over the deep creepiness of what its main characters are doing; how scary can it get when the two craziest people in the movie are played by Beanie Buddies like Ryan and Broderick? The psychic vertigo of jealousy, the way romantic obsession can turn its host into a black hole, this is the stuff from which truly savage comedy can be made. (Preston Sturges' elegant, demonically funny "Unfaithfully Yours," starring Rex Harrison as a green-eyed symphony conductor plotting the elaborate murder of his innocent wife, is the benchmark.) But Dunne's movie has the same relationship to the dark emotions it glosses that Disneyland's Jungleboat Cruise ride has to an actual excursion down the Amazon -- all the monsters make an appearance, but only in manageable, animatronic form. Still, I laughed. The pair's improbably successful Rube Goldberg-esque schemes to make Linda suspect Anton of philandering have the daffy charm of an "I Love Lucy" episode. And Dunne has some fond insights on the paradoxes of human nature. Even though it makes no sense that Maggie should actually move into Sam's "bohemian hellhole" (what happened to her apartment? I found myself perpetually wondering), once she's settled in, the two of them slip into a cozy routine. They compare notes and spend their evenings on the sofa, eating takeout and watching the projections from across the street like a suburban couple sacked out in front of the tube. Even dementia, the film observes, can become a domestic comfort if you've got someone to share it with. Sam gets a job washing dishes in Anton's restaurant, with the joke being that he's so nice he can't help starting to sympathize with his rival. Heading in for the wind-up, Dunne suddenly needs to humanize the Frenchman, heretofore a figure of suspicious amatory smoothness and a temperamental, imperious boss. The two conspirators, natch, begin to fall in love, and their commitment to the plot wobbles. Despite the fact that Sam really does seem best suited to the treacly, angelic Linda (she's a kindergarten teacher, no less), he begins to yearn for Maggie's edgier affections. "Addicted to Love" follows Hollywood logic, not anything remotely connected to real-world likelihoods, but even so, it's full of loose ends and head scratchers. Why, for example, does Linda's father crop up twice to read Dear John letters? Rather than closing with any sense of earned satisfaction, the movie just sort of congeals. It's a moderately pleasant, if rickety, summer diversion -- an amusement park ride skirting the shadowy side of love, in which your seat belt will always remain securely fastened.
P R E V I O U S R E V I E W S"Night Falls on Manhattan" By Robin Dougherty (05/16/97) "The Fifth Element" By Scott Rosenberg (05/09/97) "Children of the Revolution" By Laura Miller (05/09/97) "Irma Vep" By Stephanie Zacharek (05/09/97) "Hollow Reed" By Charles Taylor (05/02/97) "Austin Powers" By Laura Miller (05/02/97) "Romy and Michele" By Robin Dougherty (04/25/97) "Volcano" By Gary Kamiya (04/25/97) "All Over Me" By Nell Bernstein (04/25/97) BROWSE OUR MOVIE ARCHIVES |
PHOTO BY BARRY WETCHER | COURTESY OF WARNER BROS. | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
