It’s not too often that I have to stifle a genuine urge to scream at a movie screen, but it was through gritted teeth that I sat through this trite, manipulative, excruciating nightmare of female pyschosis and idiocy presented as feminine adorableness. Feminism has never touched the world of Daphne Nitwit (Diane Keaton: The Family Stone, in a performance that would seem to indicate that she has had some sort of nervous breakdown and should be secluded in a quiet place without too much outside stimulation), an embarrassing harridan of a mother who insists upon finding a husband for her youngest daughter, Milly (Mandy Moore: American Dreamz). Milly, you see, is apparently in danger of becoming an old maid -- she remains perilously unwed at the advanced age of 22, and never mind that she owns and runs an enormously successful catering business at this unlikely age: she is on the verge of eternal doom. And so this obnoxiously reactionary, moronic dumb film sets up a cartoonish dichotomy between the cool cad Daphne wants for Milly -- an architect (Tom Everett Scott: Boiler Room) for whom Milly has no apparent attraction and yet seems ready to marry anyway -- and the musician “nice guy” (Gabriel Macht: The Good Shepherd) that Milly is actually genuinely attracted to, or would be, if she had an emotional age that were even half her chronological one. But then, we’ve seen what her mother is like: emotional maturity is not something that runs in this horrible family.

(Technorati tags: Because I Said So, Diane Keaton, Mandy Moore)