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<TITLE>Review for Bye Bye, Love (1995)</TITLE>
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<H1 ALIGN="CENTER" CLASS="title"><A HREF="/Title?0112606">Bye Bye, Love (1995)</A></H1><H3 ALIGN=CENTER>reviewed by<BR><A HREF="/ReviewsBy?Scott+Renshaw">Scott Renshaw</A></H3><HR WIDTH="40%" SIZE="4">
<PRE>                                 BYE BYE LOVE
                       A film review by Scott Renshaw
                        Copyright 1995 Scott Renshaw</PRE>
<P>Starring:  Matthew Modine, Randy Quaid, Paul Reiser, Janeane Garofolo.
Screenplay:  Gary David Goldberg and Brad Hall.
Director:  Sam Weisman.</P>
<P>     A movie about divorce and custody in 1995 seems about as timely
as a movie about mood rings.  Family breakups have been an all too
familiar part of the American landscape for nearly thirty years, and
countless dramas have told stories of acrimonious court battles in
hand-wringing detail.  Still, I can't recall a comedy about the
subject before BYE BYE LOVE.  And after it, I still can't.  BYE BYE
LOVE is rarely funny, more often a weak and melodramatic retread of
common TV-movie fare.  Only a few moments which have nothing to do
with the film's main premise offer big laughs instead of cliched
emotion.</P>
<P>     BYE BYE LOVE follows one weekend in the lives of three divorced
fathers who get weekend custody of their children.  Dave (Matthew
Modine), a father of two, is an inveterate womanizer having
difficulty staying faithful to his latest girlfriend; Vic (Randy
Quaid) is a foul-humored father of three about to go on a rare date;
Donny (Paul Reiser) pines for his ex-wife and has trouble relating
to his teenage daughter Emma (Eliza Dushku).  Over the course of the
weekend, the three men face various crises, including Vic's blind
date from hell (Janeane Garofolo) and Donny's growing estrangement
from Emma.</P>
<P>     The three lead actors form a rather unlikely combo, and the
quality of their performances is of widely varying quality.  Randy
Quaid is the best of the three, bitter without being irritating,
gleefully spiteful without being frightening.  His run-ins with is
ex-wife (Lindsey Crouse) are a bit over-played, though, and his
confrontation with a pompous radio psychologist (Rob Reiner) is
gimmicky and implausible.  He does get BYE BYE LOVE's best sub-plot,
a hilarious dinner date with a gloriously demented Janeane Garofolo,
and he does a great slow burn.  Paul Reiser really has only one
character, his slightly befuddled, uptight nice guy "Mad About You"
persona, but he does it well.  As a personality, he is appealing,
but as a character, he becomes pretty boring here.  Matthew Modine,
is, quite simply, terrible.  This isn't a performance good enough to
be called mailed-in; he even forgot to put a stamp on it.  Modine
lacks any charm in an appallingly under-written role, looks bored
most of the time, and gets stuck with a trite little speech about
how it's all his father's fault he's such a cad.  Carolco's
executives, whose entire future is resting on Modine's bankability
for the upcoming CUTTHROAT ISLAND, must be sweating buckets right
now.</P>
<P>     BYE BYE LOVE basically comes off as a very confused movie,
because it spends far too much of its time on the new relationships
of its main characters instead of on the relationships between the
fathers and their kids, making it just another "dating in the 90s"
movie.  When the movie does deal with the children at all, it is to
have one of them scream out an accusation and/or cry, perhaps to be
resolved later by a sensitive talk and a hug, perhaps not.  Even
more confusing is a sub-plot featuring the late Ed Flanders as a
widower who goes to work and a McDonald's and befriends a troubled
youth.  It is a sad end to Flanders' career, getting caught up in
a truly annoying over-use of McDonald's as a location, a plot device
and, apparently, a major advertiser.</P>
<P>     Even if BYE BYE LOVE had decided to spend its time focusing
exclusively on the parent-child relationships, it still would have
been pretty difficult to pull off, because ultimately there is very
little humor one can wring from family break-ups and their effects
on children.  Any way you slice it, it is a bad situation for kids,
and the makers of BYE BYE LOVE mostly go for the heartstrings when
dealing with the single parenting issue.  It is left to the dads'
romantic fumblings to probide what little humor there is, and it
isn't enough.  There have been comparisons between BYE BYE LOVE and
PARENTHOOD, but PARENTHOOD was both genuinely funny and genuinely
touching.  BYE BYE LOVE is a genuine shame.</P>
<PRE>     On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 single parents:  3.</PRE>
<PRE>--
Scott Renshaw
Stanford University
Office of the General Counsel</PRE>
<PRE>.
</PRE>
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