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9 July 2004 | The Hollywood Reporter | See recent The Hollywood Reporter news »

Samuel Goldwyn Films

Yet another film seeking to pay homage to 1950s American cinema, "Anything but Love" earns an A for effort but a much lower grade in the entertainment department.

Shot in what the filmmakers call "an approximation of Technicolor" and using optical techniques of '50s comedies, director Robert Cary and his star and co-writer Isabel Rose get the look right more often than not. Lacking the budget for a period piece, they opt instead for a contemporary story in the '50s mode. The clash in sensibilities is somewhat jarring, but much more problematic are two halting and ultimately dull love stories that form not so much an eternal triangle but an infernal drag on viewers' good will. Audience response will probably be as tepid as its story.

What links the '50s to the present-day tale is its heroine, Billie Golden (Rose), who insists on living her life to a '50s beat. She dresses like Audrey Hepburn and Rita Hayworth and sings '50s torch songs in a dismal JFK Airport lounge. She chooses to ignore, as much as she can, her mother's alcoholism and her family's past failures whenever any one attempts to follow their dream.

Her '50s mind-set also interferes with a developing love relationship with a rich high school classmate-turned-Manhattan attorney (a stiff Cameron Bancroft). When Billie needs to improve her piano skills to maintain the lounge act, she hires a disheveled but similarly dreamy pianist (Andrew McCarthy), then finds herself torn romantically between the two men. The final key cast member is none other than ageless chanteuse Eartha Kitt, who provides words of wisdom that make Billie face the music.

We, of course, know who her true soulmate is. Bancroft is encouraged (and dressed) to play a smug suit with little tolerance for his lover's retro sensibilities. McCarthy, on the other hand, is comfortably rumpled with a filthy baseball cap and passion for '50s tunes.

Cary lacked the money to stage musical numbers with any flair, and he and his cohorts are such slaves to the '50s models that they forget to be original in any way. "Anything but Love" ends up little more than a vanity piece for Rose and an exercise in style over substance for Cary. Technical credits are not nearly good enough for such an ambitious film.

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1 item from 2004