NOT! What Love Is

If you are part of the in your face bar dating scene then you may enjoy “What love Is” The movie which describes itself as a romantic comedy for men boasts a great cast that includes Cuba Gooding Jr., Sean Astin, Gina Gershon, Anne Heche, Tamala Jones and Mathew Lillard. There is also snappy and witty dialogue delivered by this good-looking and sexy cast.

Johnny Brenden, Mars Callahan and Cuba Gooding Jr.

However, for most of the rest of us, “What Love Is”, is not this movie. The movie is about a later coming of age group of people. Tom a bar owner comes home from work on Valentine Day expecting to propose marriage to the woman who he has lived with for three years and finds out she is leaving via a Dear John letter and a curt phone conversation. Meanwhile his friends Sal (Mathew Lillard), Ken (Mars Callahan, George (Sean Astin) and Wayne (Andrew Daly) come over to party. Sal even invites some women who show up a little later.

Mars Callahan, who not only plays Ken, but also wrote and directed the film told ECE on the Red Carpet for its’ Vegas Premier. “I started writing it 10 years ago, examining relationships, love and everyone’s miss conception of what love really is. While writing and making the film, we get to argue all sorts of different sides, perspectives, and we address that everyone’s ‘ views have validity”. He also told us that he filmed the movie in six days. Then he added “In order to make a movie in six days these great actors had to learn pages and pages of dialogue”.

All of this shows, because what you have is mostly a dialogue movie that is preachy, characters that are a stereotype perception of men vs. women on relationships without ever resolving anything. There was really no character development. It is much better to show not tell in a movie. This movie needed more action to go along with the talk. Mars Callahan credits include mostly television projects. “What Love Is” seems more like a pilot for a television series than a full-length featured film.