Starring Diane Keaton, Kevin Kline
Directed by Lawrence Kasdan
Few sights are more dispiriting than a filmmaker who's run out of things to say. This sadly seems to be the case with Lawrence Kasdan (The Big Chill), who allows his talented ensemble cast to prattle on for 103 minutes without ever stumbling upon a single word of wisdom.
The catalyst for the film is an abandoned mutt named Freeway, who probably should've been called MacGuffin instead. A year after Beth (Diane Keaton) found him along a roadside, the dog has inadvertently played matchmaker for Beth's daughter Grace (Elisabeth Moss) and a handsome veterinarian. Following Grace's wedding at a Colorado vacation home, Freeway runs off on Joseph (Kevin Kline), Beth's self-involved husband. A protracted search ensues, triggering countless walk-and-talks between Beth and Joseph, as well as friends and family (Dianne Wiest, Richard Jenkins, and Mark Duplass).
A story that's inane from the outset grows downright risible once they enlist the aid of a sexy gypsy mystic (Ayelet Zurer) who shares a tenuous psychic connection with animals and has an annoying habit of starting sentences with, "My people have a saying..." Her vague visions ("Something about... blue...") that guide the search party prove emblematic of an aimless film that possesses no clear concept of what it hopes to achieve.
It's incumbent on a filmmaker to lend their work sufficient purpose, urgency, and stakes to convince an audience that theirs is a story that simply needed to be told. Devoid of all three, Darling Companion feels like something tossed together by a semi-retired millionaire when he grew bored of puttering around the four-car garage.
