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The bad news: Director of Love & Sex is a woman.
But fear not the women's romantic comedy, gentle readers. While Love & Sex won't win any Oscars or many hearts, it's a capable movie worth a chuckle or two.
Famke Janssen (recently seen in X-Men) stars as Kate, a somewhat hapless fashion-rag journalist looking for love in the big city of Los Angeles. Only she's 'complicated,' - and not to mention, like, eight feet tall - so no guy 'understands' her. That is, except for artist Adam (Swingers' Jon Favreau), a sort of L.A. version of a Woody Allen neurotic, the kind of guy who obsesses over a woman, jumps out of the relationship when it slows down, and of course immediately regrets his decision. Adam's stalker-like behavior with Kate becomes a focus for the film, with the pair meeting periodically to tear out their respective hair.
First-time writer/director Valerie Breiman has made an often funny but always scattered picture in Love & Sex. Kate's endless quest-for-love saga is pretty obviously drawn from Breiman's own life, which probably explains why the movie is all over the map: She's just giving us the high points, the ones that might make for good jokes.
To bad for Janssen that Favreau gets all the good lines. Singlehandedly he makes Love & Sex watchable, carrying it through the rocky comic moments (first date, strip tease, etc.) and past the few dramatic cliches these movies always seem to have (hint: she's pregnant). For her part, Janssen looks so much like Sandra Bullock in this movie that it's disturbing.
Fortunately, Janssen and Favreau have enough chemistry to mostly carry Love & Sex through its rocky moments... of which, there are quite a few.
Sex 1, Love 0.
