Darling Companion (Lawrence Kasdan, 2012): USA

Reviewed by Sofia Arnbom. Viewed at the Santa Barbara Film Festival.

It all starts with a dog. The dog changes the lives of the people that are involved. Darling Companion is a touching movie about friendship and finding yourself in different relationships.

Beth Winter (Diane Keaton) and her daughter Grace (Elisabeth Moss) impulsively stops there car besides a freeway and finds a lonely dirty dog. She decides to keep it and she gives the dog the name Freeway. The dog changes the family in some ways with its presence. Beth becomes happier, her husband Dr. Joseph Winter’s (Kevin Kline) hard facade begins to melt and Freeway makes Grace fall in love with the Vet Sam Bhoola (Jay Ali).

We go fast one year ahead to when the family is on vacation and Grace and Sam gets married in the Rocky Mountains. One day Dr. Joseph is out for a walk with Freeway and one moment he gets distracted by a phone call and Freeway disappears into the forest. The disappearance of Freeway makes few of the remaining guests and one odd local women Carmen (Ayelet Zurer) go together in a frantic search. Carmen says she is a gypsy and gets this images or feelings of where Freeway is and that makes the hunt comical and dramatic. The hunt becomes more and more for the characters a look for themselves.

When the hunt is as most frantic, Beth and Joseph is up in the Rocky Mountain looking for Freeway and gets lost in the woods as the sun goes down. This event gives them the time to talk about problems they have not solved out through the years. As the rain starts to fall their trust to each other really puts to the test. It is in the middle of the night, Beth and Joseph are running around in the forest and Joseph gets hurt. Even though Beth is mad at him for loosing the dog she has to give him all her attention. They are more or less carrying  each other through the forest and then finds a house were they are saved. After all that has happened, ride through the storm, and everything can change. That is one of the big themes in this movie. Be brave to say what you think and do not live in a relationship that does not suits you. Everybody can change if they just can be aware of what is wrong.

This is a typical Hollywood-stylistic movie; well-known actors, a known director, a big budget and beautiful pictures. But after all the story is thin. The writing is very poor, there is not as  much drama as there could and should have been. Much of the movie is really about the two main characters, Beth and Joseph, are aging. That is what the whole movie is about, they are getting old and they are bored. Kasdan mentioned in the beginning that this movie is based on a real event in his life. One risk with putting to much of yourself in a screenplay, you end up writing to satisfy yourself rather than to the audience. Somewhere in the beginning of this movie, the story gets off its rails and it really shows.

Diane Keaton is playing a similar role in this movie to what she use to play, an older woman that goes to a life change as in The First Wives Club and  Because I Said So. I bet she would like to play something else than somebody’s tough, hysterical mother. Kevin Kline and Richard Jenkins are acting really good and Richard Jenkin’s role is one of the highlights in the movie. He brings some of the real laughs in the move. The best actor in the  movie is the dog, Freeway. It is a pity he gets lost after the first half of the movie.

There are a lot of other movies with the same theme, but with a better and more interesting story that you should see instead. Do not waste your time seeing old couples arguing with each other over a dog in one and a half over, unless you can relate it to yourself. Or just likes the view of the Rocky Mountains.