Because I Said So

Because I Said So (Diane Keaton, Mandy Moore, Gabriel Macht, Stephen Collins, Tom Everett Scott, Lauren Grant, Piper Perabo) — I expected more from Diane Keaton’s follow-up to Something’s Gotta Give, but no. This is a sitcom turned movie featuring Keaton as a “helicopter,” hovering over her unmarried daughter.  Mom’s turning 60 and doesn’t want the daughter, Milly (played surprisingly well by Mandy Moore), to turn into her — alone, but not lonely.  A surprising amount of the movie shows mom and the three daughters (the other two are played by Lauren Grant and Piper Perabo) on their cell phones.  But, at its heart, it’s Keaton playing Yenta the Matchmaker and Moore playing Chava, the youngest daughter without a match.   (I can almost hear Tevye singing.) In her quest to find Moore a man, she takes out the longest personal ad in Internet history and (literally) interviews candidates — yes, apparently all of the men are from their geographic area.  She does this in a local restaurant where, SURPRISE, the entertainer, a guitarist, is a hunk who watches and overhears the interviews, especially the one with Mr. Right.  OK, you now know exactly what’s going to happen.  And SURPRISE, it does.  The rest is predictable as boys meet girl, girl loses boys, and girl finds the real Mr. Right.  Yuck!  Keaton is surprisingly bad; Moore surprisingly good; Tom Everett Scott amazingly the same he was in That Thing You Do; and Stephen Collins (from Des Moines, Iowa) the man who rescues mom from old age, is the best of the lot.  See this at your peril … or with Golda.