The Films of Lawrence Kasdan

Body Heat

The Big Chill

Silverado

The Accidental Tourist

I Love You to Death

Grand Canyon

Wyatt Earp

French Kiss

Mumford

Dreamcatcher

Darling Companion (May 20/12)

Darling Companion casts Diane Keaton as Beth, a well-to-do homemaker who finds (and saves) a dog on the side of the road and impulsively decides to keep it - with this decision not sitting well with Beth's uptight, surgeon husband (Kevin Kline's Joseph). It's during a trip to the mountains that Joseph, perhaps inevitably, loses the dog, with the remainder of the proceedings detailing the ongoing search to find the misplaced pup. Director Lawrence Kasdan, working from a script cowritten with Meg Kasdan, has infused Darling Companion with a pervasively low-key feel that is rarely as oppressive or problematic as one might've feared, with the movie's consistently watchable atmosphere heightened by an irresistibly eclectic cast that includes, among others, Dianne Wiest, Sam Shepard, Mark Duplass, and Richard Jenkins. And although the Kasdans occasionally stress elements of a decidedly hackneyed nature - eg Beth admonishes her husband by exclaiming, "you know more about your patients than your own family!" - Darling Companion has been peppered with moments of a distinctly heartfelt nature that, generally speaking, compensate for the missteps within the screenplay. (It is hard, however, to excuse the inclusion of a hopelessly silly subplot involving a mystical gypsy (Ayelet Zurer's Carmen) who can supposedly see what the dog sees.) The end result is a passably pleasant endeavor from Kasdan that is, admittedly, a far cry from his earlier work, and yet the movie's subdued, character-driven sensibilities are undoubtedly a refreshing change from the big-budget, high-concept fare littering multiplexes.