The pitch sessions for Ashton Kutcher movies must be more interesting than the unfailingly generic films themselves.
Kutcher has never made a film that was anything less than a superfluous studio attempt to collect some dough; everything he's been involved in is redolent of focus-group testing and skittish executives fine-tuning out any stray ounce of creativity. Of late, the Kutcher pitchers have been focusing on upping the maturity of their bankable doofus, as evidenced in last month's race-skewing \Guess Who"" and this week's ""A Lot Like Love.""
The maturity boost in ""A Lot Like Love"" comes in the form of an emphasis on career responsibility and its clash with love, as Oliver (Kutcher) and Emily's (Amanda Peet) on-again, off-again relationship is jeopardized by that pesky ""real world."" Like a half-assed, brainless ""Closer,"" ""A Lot Like Love"" hops from event to event over the course of an extended period of time, briefly tracking character progress and perpetually checking in on every-often random-meeting between the principals. Along the way, typical supporting characters drop in and out, including Oliver's friend and business partner Jeeter (Kal Penn, Kumar of ""Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle"") and some unremarkable significant others existing to dump or be dumped by Oliver or Emily.
Although the romantic comedy genre has been all but exhausted, sharp writing and incisive characterization can feasibly make the old seem new. But this is a Kutcher vehicle, dependably devoid of spark, wit, imagination or any creative sense of purpose. Colin Patrick Lynch's script is nothing but a patchwork of elements from other similar, better films, strung together by a soundtrack lifted from a Clear Channel playlist and nondescriptly directed by British fluffmeister Nigel Cole.
The reasons keeping Oliver and Emily apart for the duration of the film are tedious and contrived, but their encounters are even more uneventful and dull than usual. Lynch wisely avoids trying to make Kutcher sound clever, but as a result, the conversations that constitute the entire film are rife with tedium and more than a little idiocy. Juliette Lewis and Giovanni Ribisi's mentally retarded characters in ""The Other Sister"" had more intelligent exchanges of romantic banter than Kutcher and Peet do here.
Kutcher is too harmless to be truly hateful; even though he can't act his way out of a paper bag, he doesn't offend or grate on the nerves too often. He's a moron playing a moron, for better or for worse, and at least his stupidity remains a constant character trait. Peet's character, however, can't go from one scene to another without morphing into someone completely different-at first, she's a nicotine-inhaling, ball-busting punk chick, then she's a typical, desperate gal scouring the town for a New Year's Eve date, then... well, it keeps changing. Peet understandably fails to nail down some consistency and even occasionally locates flickers of charm in her problematic character, even though it's worth noting that the ball-busting stuff is considerably more convincing. Nobody else, even the gifted Penn, registers as more than a blip on the radar, as Lynch and Cole strive to keep the spotlight firmly on Kutcher and Peet.
""A Lot Like Love"" is far from the worst movie so far this year and is even miles above some of Kutcher and Peet's previous cinematic winners. But it remains wholly unnecessary and, save for a few chuckles, will prod little reaction besides indifference. It may be the most insignificant movie of Kutcher's career-it isn't even terrible in a campy, ""Mystery Science Theatre 3000"" way-not the worst, but the most forgettable. It may aspire to steer Kutcher's career in a more mature direction, but through incompetence and sheer lack of skill, ""A Lot Like Love"" is a lot like crap.
