Film Review: Laws of Attraction

There are several unhappy marriages onscreen in Laws of Attraction, a movie about divorce lawyers in love, but none of them have anything to do with cheated-on plaintiffs or weasely defendants. The first is the unfortunate coupling of Julianne Moore with this formulaic froth. The second, the marriage of product placement and movie making. The offspring of that particular happy union is this movie, an extended advertisement for Pepsico, various other snackfood products, and the Ireland tourism board, with some half-hearted cosmetic surgery humor thrown in for good measure.

Audrey Miller (Julianne Moore) and Daniel Rafferty (Pierce Brosnan) are both attractive, wealthy workaholic divorce attorneys who are, inexplicably, single. There is some brief explication of Audrey’s unattachment—her parent’s own messy union, fear of repeated mistakes and the like—but all this does very little to make her a likable human being. Her only friend/confidant in the world is her mother , an aggressively youth-defying woman (Frances Fisher), who refuses to answer to “mother” in public. What Audrey does have is a high-powered career at “the Tiffany’s” of law firms in New York City. She has never lost a case.

Her streak is interrupted, of course, when she meets Brosnan’s rumpled Rafferty, who also is coasting along undefeated. The prospect of losing makes her nervous. So nervous in fact that she devours a Sno-ball in the courtroom bathroom, a scene which the post-screening crowd in the ladies room decided was the most realistic in the whole movie. (Consensus was also reached on the “adorability” of Brosnan). Audrey continues to nosh her way through every emotionally distressing moment in the movie, at one point running away from Daniel down a city block clutching a bag of Cheetos for dear life. This appears to be the most creative way the filmmakers could come up with to showcase a successful, well-dressed woman’s peccadilloes.

After the initial pairing as opposing counsel, the two continue to face off, eventually arriving at the central case of the movie: an acrimonious, made for MTV break-up. Parker Posey is disappointing as Serena, the fashion designer wife of hard-rockin’ Brit, Thorne Jamison (Michael Sheen) who wants a lawyer to “rip his balls off,” not necessarily metaphorically speaking. Posey seems to have forgotten that to convey independence of spirit it is not enough simply to slouch in a chair. The one contested item in the divorce is the pair’s love nest of an Irish castle.

Immediately after the Gaelic name of the castle trips clumsily off everyone’s tongue, Audrey and Daniel must leave for Ireland to depose the staff and absorb the breathtaking vistas. After imbibing a little too much of local flavor, the couple wakes up in bed together sporting makeshift wedding rings and the totally improbable belief that whatever they did to get those wedding rings is somehow legally binding. When they return to New York and the prying eyes of the New York tabloid press, they fake being married lest their careers suffer. They fake it til they make it, of course, though they’re basically faking it all along.

Perhaps, in time, Jerry Seinfeld and American Express can prevent movies like this from being made. They can have their internet advertainment and theater-goers can savor the realistic choice a woman in emotional duress would make when fleeing a convenience store: chocolate or ice cream, products not made by Pepsico.