Because I Said So review

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“I consider myself a reasonably sane mother,” snorts Daphne (Diane Keaton). Her behaviour, alas, tells a different story, the nearly-60 mom-of-three stomping over boundaries in crazed pursuit of a suitable love-match for her klutzy youngest, Milly (Mandy Moore). Further than ever from his Heathers heyday, helmer Michael Lehmann shrugs out a wrong-com as shrill, overbearing and cuckoo-brained as Daphne herself.

The family pooch bags a bigger role than middle daughter Piper Perabo as the plot mechanics clunk into place: yuppie architect Tom Everett Scott minds Milly breaking stuff while shaggy rocker Gabriel Macht doesn’t. Goodness, who will she choose? Most shameful of all is the sight of Keaton pratfalling through a series of mainly laughless internet, massage and cake-based blunders. If you’re a mother or a daughter some of it may resonate, but how apt that this painful, toothless farce was originally dreamt up at the dentist…

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