Mandy Moore may be themost affected actress — no, wait, worse — the most annoying human being on the planet.
In the deadening romantic-comedy “Because I Said So,” Moore is less to such an extent that her posing, preening badness is like an Ebola virus outbreak that even manages to infect the great Diane Keaton. It’s like a weird girl-on-girl mugging contest to see who can overdo her facial expressions worse.
Of course, the blame for today’s forced yarn can’t all be laid at the feet of its stars.
Director Michael Lehmann, whose credits range from the sublime “The Truth About Cats and Dogs” to the ridiculous “Airheads,” is aided and abetted in this time-wasting tomfoolery by the screenwriters of the cornball “Stepmom,” Karen Leigh Hopkins and Jessie Nelson. Together, the filmmakers try to rely on recurring pie-in-the-face pratfalls and the career goodwill Keaton has built up as a madcap screen legend since her Woody Allen days to try to pull off a modern mother-daughter farce.
Unfortunately, given the lazy direction and lame material, the former Annie Hall only seems like a caricature of a character as the meddlesome and romantically repressed matriarch Daphne Wilder. With her other two daughters married off — as played by the wonderful (but here underutilized) Lauren Graham of “Gilmore Girls,” and the never-wonderful Piper Perabo — Daphne decides to place an internet ad, surreptitiously interview and then set up potential husbands for her flighty, perennially lovelorn youngest Milly (Moore).
But Milly starts preferring one of Mom’s secret reject candidates, the charming but low-status musician Johnny (Gabriel Macht), over her preferred choice who is a fancy-schmancy architect (Tom Everett Scott).
As Milly must choose between the stock suitors — resulting in an obvious plot turn offering zero suspense — the truth of Mom’s interfering machinations will come to light as her own love life resurrects by way of Johnny’s cute Dad (Stephen Collins).
Audience indifference ensues.
The action, if you can call it that, does have a couple of redeeming qualities. The production values are agreeable, with colorful sets and fun clothing. And the boy actors are appropriately swoon-worthy, at least visually, as is necessary for a blatant chick flick.
But, take my advice, skip it anyway.
Why? Because I said so!
‘Because I Said So’
Starring: Mandy Moore, Diane Keaton
Director: Michael Lehmann
Rated PG-13 for sexual content including dialogue, some mature thematic material and partial nudity
