Someone tell writer-director Mars Callahan what a movie is.
What Love Is (2007)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:13
Fresh:2
Rotten:11
Average Rating:3.1/10
Synopsis: "What Love Is" is a sincere, insightful, and unapologetically frank romantic comedy for men about a man who finds out, during the course of one very important night in his life, what love truly is.... "What Love Is" is a sincere, insightful, and unapologetically frank romantic comedy for men about a man who finds out, during the course of one very important night in his life, what love truly is. The story opens on Tom Riley as he nervously has one drink at his neighborhood bar in order to steady himself before he heads home to ask his long-time girlfriend, Sara, if she will marry him. It's Valentine's Day and he's got the ring, he's got the flowers and now that he has his one drink, he's got the courage. He tells his group of best friends at the bar to meet him at his house for a surprise celebration. He grabs a bottle of champagne and heads home only to find that his girlfriend has left him. His friends soon arrive. The night is filled with beautiful strippers, intelligent women, sensitive men, a gay wedding announcement and a very real look at what the sexes say about each other when the opposite sex is not around and what happens when they are. -- © Big Sky Motion Pictures [More]
Starring: Cuba Gooding, Sean Astin, Matthew Lillard, Mars Callahan
Starring: Cuba Gooding, Sean Astin, Matthew Lillard, Mars Callahan, Anne Heche, Gina Gershon, Tamala Jones
Director: Mars Callahan
Director: Mars Callahan
Reviews for What Love Is
The level of insight in this romantic comedy’s dialogue makes the oeuvre of Ed Burns look like Racine.
Now and then there is something strangely right about films this defiantly wrongheaded, but What Love Is never rises above the leaden, overbearing qualities of Callahan's dialogue and staging.
What Love Is overflows with mind-numbing patter, bizarrely delivered with the arch formality of David Mamet, with the net effect of being yelled at for no reason.
Shot on HD over the course of a week, calling-card pic looks and sounds like an Off Off Broadway play.
Gooding is solid in the leading-man role. He has some of the best lines, and he's pretty much the only character you could stand to hang out with in real life.
A shrill cacophony of puerile clichés about men and women and sex, delivered in adrenaline-driven harangues and arrogant lectures. When the stage clears, all that's left is the unpleasant odor of all that hot air.
Too wordy frozen stage play with Matt Lillard a spitting, screaming, out-of-control embarrassment.
In its own peculiar way, What Love Is is a testament to the redemptive power of words. Thankfully, Callahan knows to keep it short and sweet, lest his audience go mad from the noise.
It could be that What Love Is is what lovers of either gender can like, thanks to equal parts misogynistic machismo and locker-room girl talk, all of it tied together with just a little bit of cozy romantic reality.
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