Because I Said So

Diane Keaton wants her daughters to do things "Because I Said So" in this 2007 movie.

Keaton is a neurotic mother who is constantly poking her nose into her daughters' lives. She is desperate for her youngest (Mandy Moore) to find a man to spend the rest of her life with, so she puts an ad on a dating site and interviews potential men. Yeah, that certainly is a way to find a life partner for your daughter - advertise and then screen them for her.

One of the problems for me in this movie was Diane Keaton's performance. Here is an excellent, wonderful actress, capable of so much, playing the most annoying woman in history. If she were my mother, she'd have been dead long before her "big birthday" - 60. I don't know what the director was thinking having her go so over the top like that.

Not to mention, this film had Lifetime written all over it. How the producers got movie people to participate in this is to their credit, though it's done all the time - a TV script put on the big screen because someone with clout gets a movie star to agree to it. We saw it in "Before and After," "Six Days and Seven Nights," "What Lies Beneath," that movie with Hugh Jackman and Ashley Judd that I saw in the theater and blocked out of my mind - all TV fare turned into bad movies and starring big people.

I guess you can tell I didn't like it. I very rarely hate anything. If you've read some of my other reviews and find you agree with me on a lot of films, when you see this one is coming on TV, run; if you are tempted to put it on your Netflix list, don't do it.

In "Because I Said So" Diane Keaton plays an overprotective mother, Daphne, to Millie (Mandy Moore). The other daughters, Lauren Graham and Piper Perabo, are married so their lives are OK, but Millie doesn't have a man, so her life is empty, or so says Keaton. The main problem with this movie is that Keaton plays the overprotective mother very over the top, and it's just not that funny.

The sisters all have their own charm, although Perabo is underused. And the parade of men that come in and out of their lives are all very handsome. I particularly enjoyed the contrasts between the man Daphne chose for Millie (Jason, Tom Everett Scott) and the man that Millie chose for herself (Johnny, Gabriel Macht).

If they had chosen to follow more of a romantic drama route and explored all the different relationships, this film would have been significantly better. But as a comedy, "Because I Said So" is overblown and not funny.

If you can swallow the beautiful and sexy Mandy Moore as an uncoordinated doofus with low self-esteem who can't find a decent guy to go out with her, then you may be able to get into the spirit of "Because I said So." However, you'll also have to put up with Diane Keaton in a truly grating performance as a neurotic control freak of a mother who spends most of her time obsessing over the romantic travails of her youngest daughter, going so far as to post an ad on an internet dating site seeking out prospective husbands for the unsuspecting girl.

The actions of this modern-day Yenta the Matchmaker set into motion a whole host of sitcom-level complications and romantic comedy hijinks that are somehow supposed to be funny but wind up being merely irritating. The screenplay by Karen Leigh Hopkins and Jessie Nelson comes replete with a bevy of mother/daughter relationship clichés, with some really lame slapstick routines - Keaton getting stuck on an internet porn site, Keaton getting run over by a skater in a park, Keaton getting a cake in her face etc. - thrown in for bad measure.

Beyond Keaton and Moore, Gabriel Macht, Tom Everett Scott and Lauren Graham are just some of the other unfortunate actors trapped inside this "chick flick" fiasco.

At a pre-screening and Q&A with Director Michael Lehmann and writer Karen Leigh Hopkins hosted by critic Leonard Maltin, the soon to be released film opened with mixed reactions before the 365 member audience of USC film students. The narrative gets off to a slow start with on opening sequence that fails to arouse much interest or laughter. Only until a joke is shared between Millie (Moore) and her mother (Keaton) about a man's uncircumcised entity does the audience begin laughing. This is fairly representative of the movie's humor. It is consistently funny, but only through cheap and superficial jokes and scenarios. At times it even verges on slapstick. However, credit must be given to both Moore and Keaton who put out stellar performances. Moore proves her ability to be an actress following initial debut in Saved and will hopefully be able to move past her image as teenie-bopper musician. Keaton convincingly portrays an over the top single mother who cannot keep her nose out of her daughters' business. The film will have wide appeal for female audiences as it is about the mother-daughter relationship. But men will also find humor throughout and should not be discouraged to accompany their wives and girlfriends. (Note: Guys, this is a good chance to compromise on seeing a romantic comedy that will not bore or disgust.) The film sticks to genre conventions but the comedy aspect of the film veers from typical. The set design and editing are both noteworthy. The film will provide a fun evening for couples, old and young, at the theater and home.

Waw! I have not seen such a bad film in a really long time...more like never actually. this is truly appalling. Lets start with the Small tragedy, the actors. Dian Keaton, normally an amazing actress somehow managed to do a really bad job with this one. Her acting was way over the top and more like hysterical really. It was like she was lending her voice to an animated film! Mandy Moore was actually better than her if u can believe it. But still quite bad. And as for the rest of the cast well there were none! we can say they were put there so that Dian Keaton and Mandy Moore can create dialog with someone other than themselves.

Now for the major tragedy, the script. A horror story put together to make the audience quiver with every uttered line! and the lines just keep getting worse and worse until we reach the climactic scene where we cave in and can no longer hold the vomit! Horrible predictable and very illogical plot. Corny is an understatement for the lines of this dialog. No depth or substance to characters. It's such a disappointment.