Love Hurts

Love hurts, and divorce hurts too, especially if you're so self-absorbed that you have no idea what's happening. Moving on also hurts when you're completely clueless about how regular people in society operate. "Love Hurts", the film, is a comedy, but it also hurts because the hackneyed jokes are more painful than funny.

None of the characters (the ex-wife, the sex-crazed assistant, or the candid son) were thought out at all. They were empty, annoying, and unintentionally more clueless than Ben, our "hero". I came close to liking Ben. Richard E. Grant can pull off sarcasm with aplomb, and he has a look that you can laugh at even when he's drunk and contemptible. But it takes a significantly better written film than this to successfully have an anti-hero hero.

"Love Hurts" doesn't have anything original, and nothing particularly funny. Most characters didn't make much sense, but they also weren't written as people, they were walking, talking jokes—which unfortunately didn't even provide any laughs. Grant brought everything he could to the character of Ben, and you can almost watch the film for him, but I would just recommend finding him in something else instead.

Thing about Richard E. Grant is he doesn't seem to be able to get part re-playing - and re-playing and re-playing - the character he played in "Withnail & I" and "How to Get Ahead in Advertising" - both of which are classics.

Withnail was in 1987 - Grant's first film - and How to Get Ahead in Advertising was in 1989 - that's over 30 yrs ago and Grant has made over 100 movies since then - but in every scenario, no matter how unsuited, he's always Withnail.

So what is the Withnail character - well, it's a frenzied Brit who is interminably bemused by the circumstances in which he in interminably incongruous.

And in Withnail and How to Get Ahead - he had a perfect fit with.writer/director Bruce Robinson - who had the "Benny Hill" sensibility of that era in Brit comedy to a tee - sharp dialogue, hilarious nonsensical narratives, etc etc.

So with Robinson, although Grant played basically the same character, the settings were completely different - in Withnail, he's a dispossessed 60's London gad-about and in "Getting Ahead" he's a slick 1980's advertising exec - but Robinson makes it work in both cases without seeming to be repetitive.

Without Robinson, or a script/director of similar wit and panache - Grant is lost and is like a audio clip that just keeps skipping and repeating.

In this offering, Grant has nowhere near a Robinson level story or script or cast of supporting actors - and, consequently, it's just a below mediocre mash with Grant flopping around being bemused but definitely not amusing.

Well, there it is ...

...unless you count the pain in your cheeks from laughing too much. I certainly had from time to time.

Anyhow, when I heard about this movie I seriously thought that it will be just another heartache, breakup, deep-thinking, insert-any-cheap-cliché-here movie, because of the title. I mean, movies with such titles usually smells like recycling the same old breakup story we've all heard for about one hundred times, if not more. The opening scene just made my bad feeling stronger with his "You've gone heavy on the cheese, honey" and her bath robe, and the flowers on the sidewalk.

Boy, was I wrong...This movie is damn hilarious! It made me laugh so hard that if I was having milk, I'm sure it'd have blew trough my nose. The father - son relationship didn't left me with the awkward feeling of something unreal, god no, I wish everybody could have a dad like that. Mom could have had a bit more time in the movie, but this was close to perfect, in my eyes.

Loved it, the craziness, lightness, the way it was always fun and alive and made you cry because of laughing, not because of sadness. Besides, dad's hot. A 9 from me, definitely go watch it, it'll make your day!

WHAT!!! 28 year old playing 17! Who they kidding? Why do they do this?

Don't they ever learn.

Stop this stupidity.

Use actors of the age they are playing.

To use somebody almost twice the age they are supposed to be playing is ridiculous.

And to the actor: why do you let them do this to you? You have no shame. Are you only in it for the money and and don't care about letting the producers and directors walk all over you? Act your age not somebody half it.

Stop me if you've heard this plot before: Wife leaves hubby because he's become too boring and inattentive. Hubby must somehow reconnect with the youthful self she fell in love with in order to win her back.

In the interim, the writer and director have to come up with a bunch of "funny" stuff to happen to Hubby before he finally achieves his goal. This includes him learning to be a stud and hooking up with a host of really unappealing ladies, including Jenna Elfman as his sushi-crazed secretary and Janeane Garofalo as an unorthodox Orthodox Jew. But the "funny" stuff is on the order of him going nuts at an 80's Karaoke night, and bowling badly while under the influence of cannabis fudge. I'd call these scenes "funny-adjacent" rather than funny. They're similar to scenes you'd find in a funny movie, minus the laughs.

Bottom Line: Richard Grant is no Hugh Grant, but this film is watchable--just.