Feast of Love

Ridiculous romance makes for a pretty meager meal

By Matt Pais

Critic's Rating:

• Email
• Print View
• Share
  • Digg
  • Del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Furl
  • Google
  • Reddit
  • Mixx
  • Mister Wong
  • Yahoo Buzz
  • Yahoo
• Add To Favorites
• Add to playlist

Photos:

Relationships are created and destroyed by an oblivious artist (Greg Kinnear), lovestruck kids (Toby Hemingway, Alexa Davalos) and a self-involved realtor (Radha Mitchell), while an old college professor (Morgan Freeman) dispenses his advice. Directed, if you can believe it, by "Bonnie and Clyde" writer and "Kramer vs. Kramer" director Robert Benton.

Big question: Can this sentimental ensemble piece reveal wisdom about relationships without sounding like a Hallmark card?

Skip it: The most romantically clueless movie since "Closer," "Feast of Love" has the gall to re-use Glen Hansard's gorgeous and melancholy song "When Your Mind's Made Up"--after it was captured so perfectly in "Once"--and pop it into a sex montage. Between Chloe (Davalos) pronouncing her name "Chlo-ay" and Brad (Kinnear) operating a successful independent coffee shop without a Starbucks in sight, much of this festival of cuteness seems like a joke that's waiting to be told.

Catch it: If you're tolerant/sappy enough to withstand a line like, "God doesn't hate us. If he did, he wouldn't have made our hearts so brave." You could bathe in a tub of marshmallows and not come close to anything this gooey.

Bottom line: "Feast of Love" features only people who look without leaping--and are encouraged to have children despite the lack of funds, family or employment--which shows that the film's heart is in the right place but it hasn't got a shred of a brain. The movie confuses puppy love with the real thing, and that's why "Feast of Love" is such a dog.

Bonus: "Feast of Love" treats everyday terrain like the set of a porn movie, with relationships sparked on baseball fields, people getting freaky on football fields and sexual opportunities coming in mundane, isolated places like an empty coffee shop during a rainstorm. And what's more romantic than porn?