Falling in Love

Directed by Ulu Grosbard, Falling in Love follows Robert De Niro’s Frank Raftis and Meryl Streep’s Molly Gilmore as they meet-cute at a busy bookstore and subsequently embark on a furtive, tentative romance (despite their marriages to other people). Filmmaker Grosbard, working from Michael Cristofer’s screenplay, delivers an often excessively deliberate drama that’s only able to capture the viewer’s interest in short-lived fits and starts, as the movie suffers from a meandering, almost episodic narrative that essentially (and ultimately) squanders the predictably top-notch efforts of its stars – with the arms-length atmosphere compounded by the head-scratching decision to keep De Niro and Streep’s respective characters apart for much of the far-from-brisk running time. And although the picture has been sprinkled with a handful of admittedly compelling sequences, including (and especially) Frank and Molly’s initial get-to-know-you conversations, Falling in Love eventually progresses into an entirely underwhelming (and thoroughly uninvolving) second half that’s rarely as romantic or engrossing as Grosbard has obviously intended – which does, in the end, cement the film’s place as a disappointingly half-baked misfire.

** out of ****