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Must Love Dogs

Must Love Dogs

Romance · Comedy · 2005

Sarah Nolan is a newly divorced woman cautiously rediscovering romance with the enthusiastic but often misguided help of her well-meaning family. As she braves a series of hilarious disastrous mismatches and first dates, Sarah begins to trust her own instincts again and learns that, no matter what, it's never a good idea to give up on love.

Movie details

Must Love Dogs

“The hardest trick is making them stay.”

2005 Romance · Comedy 1h 38m

Critical arithmetic

The consensus, allegedly.

IMDb

5.9 / 10

34K votes

Rotten Tomatoes

37 %

Tomatometer

Metacritic

46 / 100

Metascore

TMDB

5.9 / 10

Community rating

External scores via OMDb · CC BY-NC 4.0. Values normalized for display; availability varies by title.

Sarah Nolan is a newly divorced woman cautiously rediscovering romance with the enthusiastic but often misguided help of her well-meaning family. As she braves a series of hilarious disastrous mismatches and first dates, Sarah begins to trust her own instincts again and learns that, no matter what, it's never a good idea to give up on love.

CriticWise case file

What this film says about your taste.

Not a recommendation score. A measure of how closely the film’s taste signals resemble yours.

The archetype split

Who fights over Must Love Dogs?

The split comes from the same five-axis model used by the test, not audience ratings or review sentiment.

Taste neighbourhood

Nearby on the taste map.

TMDB supplies the candidates. CriticWise reorders them by craft, strangeness, prestige, emotion, and pace.

Crossing Delancey

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A fussy celebrity caterer, a blind woman, a tour-bus guide and an inexperienced wedding planner search for love.

Keeping the Faith

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Failure to Launch

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Your Place or Mine

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When best friends and total opposites Debbie and Peter swap homes for a week, they get a peek into each other's lives that could open the door to love.

Where it lives

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Names above the title

The people responsible.

Directed by

Gary David Goldberg

Written by

Gary David Goldberg

Diane Lane

Diane Lane

Sarah

John Cusack

John Cusack

Jake

Elizabeth Perkins

Elizabeth Perkins

Carol

Christopher Plummer

Christopher Plummer

Bill

Dermot Mulroney

Dermot Mulroney

Bob

Stockard Channing

Stockard Channing

Dolly

Ali Hillis

Ali Hillis

Christine

Court is in session

Put Must Love Dogs on trial.

Two incompatible taste archetypes. One film. Read the arguments, then issue a completely binding cultural ruling.

The defence The Popcorn Loyalist

“Sincerity is not manipulation.”

The film risks embarrassment to make emotion communal, and that openness is harder than fashionable detachment.

The prosecution The Cool Ironist

“The strings are showing.”

Every cue tells you exactly what to feel and when, leaving sentiment to do the work character should have done.