Because I Said So

January 1st, 2010

In an effort to prevent family history from repeating itself, meddlesome mom Daphne Wilder (Diane Keaton) attempts to set up her youngest daughter, Milly (Mandy Moore), with Mr. Right. Meanwhile, her other daughters (Lauren Graham and Piper Perabo) try to keep their mom’s good intentions under control. Tom Everett Scott, Colin Ferguson and Gabriel Macht also star in director Michael Lehmann’s multigenerational mother-daughter comedy.

Wow… how’d this get made? Who said so? This is honestly one of the most amateur professional films I have ever seen. Because I Said So should be an embarassment to the relatively young career of Moore– I don’t even know how to register what it should be to Keaton. The film, in case you hadn’t guessed, is awful. The premise is an overbearing mother tries to meddle in her youngest daughter’s life and get her married off… enter the hilarity. Except this film is the desert of laughs. There are multiple professional reviews that use the word, “cringe” and I can’t disagree. One egregious scene is with Keaton on a computer that gets stuck on an adult site… the mugging and terrible blocking– in addition to the unfunny attempts at yuks– will make you feel almost sorry for Diane. And that’s not even even the worst blocked scene… the terribleness of this film cannot be overstated. Unfunny jokes met with sappy moments and finish with a cliche-ridden ending. Awful. I wouldn’t recommend this film to my worst enemy.