# Broken Hearts Club: A Romantic Comedy, The (2000)

### reviewed by
Harvey S. Karten

    THE BROKEN HEARTS CLUB

     Reviewed by Harvey Karten
     Sony Pictures Classics
     Director: Greg Berlanti
     Writer:  Greg Berlanti
     Cast: Zack Braff, Dean Cain, Andrew Keegan, Nia Long,
    John Mahoney, Mary McCormack, Matt McGrath, Timothy
    Olyphant

They say that adolescence is the most trying time in a person's life--hormones raging, bodies changing, depressions and elations intertwined. They say that the forties are a trying time--midlife crisis, "is that all there is," no more career advancement to look forward to. Truth to tell, every time is trying and the twenties are about as difficult a decade for Americans as any other as proved by Greg Berlanti's "The Broken Hearts Club"--which happens to deal strictly with twenty-somethings in the West Hollywood gay community but which Berlanti insists is a universal, cross-over story. It's isn't really. The young men, mostly handsome, some average, seem more self-absorbed than they should be, and since "The Broken Hearts Club" purports to be a movie and not a play or a cable TV program, Berlanti should have opened it up more at least to dissipate this tedious immersion in these me-generation bores. The story could have taken place in a studio easily enough for all the background he gives us to the political or social aspects of the time and while the film is tightly edited with a strong thematic focus, the men yada yada yada so much that they could just as soon be in one of the French talkathons that bore the blazes out of most of us.

The story's center is Dennis Timothy Olyphant) who, being on the verge of celebrating his 28th birthday, is at the time of life that he wonders whether he should stop switching partners in favor of having a real relationship with someone permanent. His role model for this view is the group's father figure, Jack (John Mahoney), who is a part-owner of a successful restaurant together with some of the young ones and who serves as the guys' coach each time they play their middle-league baseball games.

Most of the discussion ranges around the self- consciousness and envies of the individuals, with average looking Patrick (Ben Weber) wishing (like the others, perhaps) that they were Cole (Dean Cain), who is the best looking fellow in the group and has just landed a small role in a movie. Kevin (Andrew Keegan) is the youngest, just 23, and he has just come out of the closet, or rather, he is cautiously wandering out and stepping back in like a dog who is bravely approaches and then judiciously backs away from a stranger.

In a side plot that is the least convincing and seems to come from another movie, Leslie (Nia Long) has a long-time relationship with Anne (Mary McCormack) and tries to convince Anne's brother Patrick to donate sperm so that she can have a baby that looks something like the object of her affection. Berlanti tries to eke some humor out of the fact that the donor center has no "Hustler" magazine on hand to assist the men.

"The Broken Hearts Club" says nothing fresh and has no particular lines of great wit or particularly interesting characters--given their incessant "look at me" or "I wish I were" vocabularies.

Rated R. Running time: 94 minutes. (C) 2000 by Harvey Karten, film_critic@compuserve.com

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