Not Exactly Addicted to Love

I happened to catch most the romantic comedy, “Addicted to Love” this weekend, as my son napped. I’m not quite sure why I stayed with the movie, as I didn’t particularly like it, but for some reason I felt compelled to keep watching until it ended.

I think it was probably by the late nineties that I’d decided that most films billed as “romantic comedies” were neither funny nor romantic, so I didn’t catch this one when it was released in 1997. It turns out I didn’t miss much but a film bubbling over with lost opportunities.

“Addicted to Love” is about a man who follows his ex to New York after she ditches him for a dashing French chef. He ends up meeting the chef’s ex and together they begin spying on their two ex lovers. In the meantime, they develop feelings for each other, but it’s not quite as pat as all that.

And I think that’s why the film didn’t  work for me. See, it had a bit more depth than your average Hollywood romcom. Plus–like the vastly superior “Forgetting Sarah Marshall”–there weren’t really  any villains in the piece. Sure, Anton, the French chef, is an arrogant goof, but he’s also bright and interesting and –at times–downright likable. So, it’s hard to reconcile the creepy invasions into his privacy and the life-ruining revenge the scorned lovers get on him with the light romantic comedy vibe the film had going on.

And, as is often the case, the laughs were tepid and spare and the romance was too. Which is a shame, because Broderick and Ryan actually had a decent amount of chemistry. If the movie had capitalized on that more, I think it could have gone two ways: wickedly sexy dark comedy or pat Hollywood romantic comedy with actual, viable romance. The weird lukewarm middle ground it utlimately  achieved felt mediocre, meandering and off-putting.