“DARLING
COMPANION” ISN’T
With a
title like “Darling Companion,” you know this Lawrence Kasdan film won’t be
attracting many people with tattoos and pierced body parts.
The
surprising thing is that Kasdan (“The Big Chill”) could take so much wonderful
talent – Diane Keaton, Dianne Wiest, Kevin Kline and Richard Jenkins – and make
such a totally dumb movie.
Filled
with old hippie baloney about following your spirit guides while sticking it to
the man, “Darling Companion” can’t even endow its cast with sincere innocence.
Is Kasdan
genuinely dedicated to such babbling drivel? One would certainly think so,
especially considering he wrote the script with wife Meg Kasdan.
Think of
it this way. If you believe old guys with long gray hair pulled back in a
ponytail can be sexy, “Darling Companion” might be for you.
That
annoying title refers to a mixed breed collie mutt which has become the object
of true affection for Beth Winter (Keaton), an emotionally starved woman with
two adult daughters. She is married to the no-nonsense Dr. Winter (Kline).
With both
daughters married, Beth believes the rest of her life will be an empty shell of
merely existing. Randomly she sees this lost and wounded dog cast adrift at the
edge of the Interstate, takes it home, names it Freeway, and suddenly her life
has meaning.
All this
gets set up in the first 20 minutes or so. Then the story jumps ahead a year
and settles in a multimillion-dollar “log cabin” summer resort home somewhere
in the Rockies, with banjo music on the soundtrack.
Dr. and
Mrs. Winter have a few vacation days there with friends Penny (Wiest) and
Russell (Richard Jenkins). Always on his cell phone, much to the annoyance of
his wife, the good doctor is out walking Freeway without a leash when the dog
suddenly bolts and runs into the woods…and never comes back.
So for
what seems like several hours, these four people plus several minor characters
scramble around the mountainside hunting for Freeway and having conversations
about their relationships and the true meaning of life.
Pretty
soon each of them has become so annoying and self-centered, applying
passive-aggressive philosophy to serve their own needs, you’ll be cheering for
Dr. Winter to smack them all up ’side the head. And Dr. Winter is the one
Kasdan set up to be the villain.
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