Laws of Attraction

Laws of Attraction starring Pierce Brosnan and Julianne Moore as divorce attorneys who meet, and spend the rest of the movie figuring out if they are in love. A total chick flick, but since I could take my lovely and gracious wife to the Keller 8 cinema (apparently, if their web domain name means anything, owned by a dude name Earl and a lady named Anne) to a movie replete with popcorn and a soda for 11 dollars, it would be worth suffering through a romantic comedy.

This may get me kicked out of the He Man Woman Hater's club (well, my marriage should have done that I suppose) I thought the film was pretty cute. Brosnan is his charming self as rumpled counselor Daniel Rafferty and Julianne Moore makes a mostly plausible, slightly maladjusted attorney Audrey Woods. Competition, attraction, drinking, hilarity. Blah, blah blah. It's cute, OK. Nothing more to see here folks, review is over, move along.

Wait, there is one thing. Apparently the principle characters think that true feelings are revealed when they are stinking drunk, that yanking off each other's clothing while three sheets into the wind is revelatory of a deep and abiding love that could, no MUST be the real thing.

What crap.

Inhibitions are important things. We are dangerous drivers when drunk. Critical responses, such as slowing down to avoid grinding the mother and four children in the crosswalk beneath the wheels of your Lincoln Extravigator are impaired.

We are just as dangerous lovers under the influence, and not just under the influence of alcohol. Angry, frightened, tired or (ahem) aroused, the human mind slips into varying degrees of decision-making unreliability. The consequences of statements or choices made under these conditions are all but universally inferior to those made when one's judgement is unimpeded by drink, adrenaline or lust.

I think the fetish for visceral emotion at the expense of reason is a major factor in our society's troubles. Romantic comedies like this never consider that two people might fall in love for sound reasons, such as mutual respect, mutual faith, or mutual admiration. Getting drunk and getting married is a cheap laugh, but writing funny lines where rivals discover nobility in each other would yield a much better film. That emotional highs, real or induced, reveal the authentic self is a pernicious and toxic myth. But then, what do you want out of Hollywood.

Tim McNabb