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Because I Said So (2007)
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Reviews Counted: 150
Fresh: 8
Rotten:142
Average Rating: 3.2/10
Consensus: Because I Said So is an unfunny, cliche-ridden mess that manages to make Diane Keaton temporarily unlikable. Manipulative, overly reliant on caricatures, and lacking a shred of human insight, this is one of 2007’s most misbegotten films.
Rated: PG-13 [See Full Rating] for sexual content including dialogue, some mature thematic material and partial nudity
Runtime: 1 hr 42 mins
Genre: Comedies
Theatrical Release:Feb 2, 2007 Wide
Box Office: $42,640,890
Synopsis: Diane Keaton lights up the screen as an overbearing, matchmaking single mother in this slightly offbeat romantic comedy from director Michael Lehmann (HEATHERS, THE TRUTH ABOUT CATS AND DOGS). The... Diane Keaton lights up the screen as an overbearing, matchmaking single mother in this slightly offbeat romantic comedy from director Michael Lehmann (HEATHERS, THE TRUTH ABOUT CATS AND DOGS). The film is a lot of fun, with both Keaton and Mandy Moore delivering energetic performances as a loveable and pretty believable mother-daughter team. After seeing two of her three stunning daughters (Piper Perabo, Lauren Graham) happily marry, Daphne Wilder (Keaton) focuses all her worries on Milly (Moore), her youngest, most insecure, and unlucky-in-love offspring. Twentysomething Milly has got her career as a chef figured out, but is clueless when it comes to love, attracting a never-ending slew of married, cheating, and closeted men. Taking matters into her own hands, Daphne places a personal ad for her daughter, interviewing the suitors herself and settling on one particularly promising young man named Jason. Meanwhile, clueless to her mother's plans, Milly starts to fall for Johnny, a cute musician who in spite of treating Milly like gold, is hardly what Daphne has in mind for her daughter's future. As Milly becomes increasingly involved with both men, Daphne must face whether maybe she could still have her own romantic life at age 60, instead of just living vicariously through her grown daughters. Unabashedly a chick flick, BECAUSE I SAID SO's intended audience is clearly female, but that's not to say it's all soft. The movie's girl talk includes frank discussions about sex and orgasms, demonstrating the unusually close relationships between the film's women and distinguishing the film from others in its genre. While following a vague romantic-comedy arc, the film also explores the bonds between women, focusing more on the mother-daughter relationship at the heart of the film than on any of the male love interests. [More]
Starring: Diane Keaton, Mandy Moore, Piper Perabo, Tom Everett Scott
Starring: Diane Keaton, Mandy Moore, Piper Perabo, Tom Everett Scott, Neil Hopkins, Lauren Graham, Stephen Collins, Tony Hale, Gabriel Macht, Ty Panitz
Director: Michael Lehmann
Director: Michael Lehmann
Screenwriter: Jessie Nelson, Karen Leigh Hopkins
Producer: Paul Brooks
Studio: Universal Pictures
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Release:
Apr 12, 2009
DVD Features:
- Region 1
- Keep Case
- Full Frame - 1.33
Audio:
- Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround - English
- Subtitles - English (SDH), Spanish - Optional
Additional Release Material:
Featurette:
- 1. The Making of Because I Said So
- 2. Designing a "Wilder" World
- 3. iVillage Pregnancy Ad
- 4. Music Video: "World Spins Madly On" by The Weepies
Additional Products:
- Mamma Mia Picture Frame
Reviews for Because I Said So
There are chick flicks and upchuck flicks. The movie Because I Said So is an upchuck chick flick.
Because I Said So isn't very funny, and no amount of having Diane Keaton act all post-menopausally zany is going to create the tension that just isn't there.
A light-weight comedy about mothers and daughters, Because I Said So is a bit like the chocolate soufflés that Mandy Moore's Milly cooks throughout. It's light and fluffy, but on occasions it does not rise to the occasion
each character in the film is so shallow and cold that there’s nobody for the audience to cheer on.
There's more than enough material here to make an enjoyable drama about a mother and her adult daughters. But the writers and director fail on virtually every front.
I don't think anyone actually wrote Because I Said So; I think that some Hollywood artificial intelligence think-tank instead fed DVD box sets of The Gilmore Girls and Sex and the City into a computer, along with Pottery Barn catalogs for roughage. ...
At 61, Diane Keaton is still doing her ditzy, girlish thing, but the act is getting a little oppressive and rarely more so than in Because I Said So, an indulgent comedy.
[A] better movie might have surfaced if everyone had taken their Ritalin and calmed down.
I hated this movie. I think it’s the worst performance of Diane Keaton’s career.
In this unwatchable romantic comedy from director Michael Lehmann Diane Keaton plays Daphne Wilder, an inept mother of three pretty but not-believable-as-siblings daughters.
As well as providing lifestyle porn, the many scenes set in stylish kitchens mean there is usually a cake on hand for somebody to be splattered with. That’s the level of the bland attempts at comedy.
With very little rewriting and a different director in charge, Because I Said So could have been retooled as a horror thriller. ... That version probably would have been funnier, too.
A desperate comedy whose frequently acute insights into tense, but loving mother-daughter relationships is constantly hamstrung by ill-advised forays into physical humor and too much reliance on Diane Keaton's mania.
I've been giving it a great deal of thought and come to the conclusion that the squandering of Diane Keaton's screen legacy is without parallel in the annals of cinema.
At one point Daphne warns Milly, "You're going to end up like some pathetic character in a Tennessee Williams play." If ever a film could have used a character from a Tennessee Williams play, it's this one.
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