# Addicted to Love (1997)

### reviewed by
James Sanford

Although generally thought of as the sweetly romantic type, Meg Ryan has actually done an impressive amount of dramatic stretching throughout her career. Those who know her only from hits such as ``When Harry Met Sally'' and ``Sleepless in Seattle'' might not suspect she's also played an Irish asylum inmate (in ``Restoration''), a tattooed teen-aged hellraiser (``Promised Land''), and, in her sharpest performance to date, an alcoholic mother in ``When A Man Loves A Woman.''

Ryan is back on the edge in ``Addicted To Love,'' although you'd never guess it from the film's adorable poster, which shows her, Matthew Broderick, Tcheky Karyo and Kelly Preston cuddling and grinning. It looks like a typical box of Hollywood candy, but ``Addicted To Love'' is full of baker's chocolate.

Ryan is cast as a borderline psychotic named Maggie for whom love means never having to cry ``uncle.'' Wearing a battered bomber jacket, aviator goggles, a knowing sneer, and eyeshadow that might have been applied with a pushbroom, she's the perfect Greenwich Village vision of a woman scorned. Cuddling and grinning are not on her agenda.

Jilted by her elitist French fiance Anton (Karyo), Maggie vows to strip him of his dignity. ``When I'm done with him, he'll be a twitching stain on the floor,'' she tells her timid partner Sam (Broderick). Sam, a moony astronomer, has hooked up with Maggie because his dreamy former girlfriend Linda (Preston) is now living with Anton.

Setting up shop in the collapsing hovel across the street, Sam has trained a camera obscura on Linda and Anton's apartment. When they're not concocting bizarre revenge schemes, involving lipstick-wearing monkeys and children with perfume-filled squirt guns, Sam and Maggie are couch potatoes, spellbound by the cinema-verite sitcom of their ex-lovers' lives.

``Addicted To Love'' was directed by Griffin Dunne, star of Martin Scorsese's harrowing 1985 comedy ``After Hours,'' the story of an extraordinarily unlucky yuppie trying to survive a night in New York. ``Addicted'' is similarly dark. Fans who loved Ryan's milquetoast persona in ``I.Q.'' and ``French Kiss'' may slip into shock when they hear Maggie tell the story of her father's unnatural devotion to his aging dog.

While it's consistently amusing, the movie falls just short of blossoming into a genuinely twisted tale. Screenwriter Robert Gordon develops popsicle toes in the last act, slightly diluting his astringent humor.

Karyo, best known for playing stolid types in art-house hits such as ``La Femme Nikita'' (1991), displays a surprising gift for physical farce and manages the English language with finesse. ``Why would I have sex with a hamburger when I can make love to a steak?'' he tells a suspicious Linda, trying to assure her he's not unfaithful.

Sam may be a bit on the sappy side, but Broderick finds the guy's naive charm. His understated style blends nicely with Ryan's edgy chutzpah, and kudos to whoever put Ryan in those tie-dyed dresses: They definitely become her. Of course, the downside of Maggie's charisma is that it throws the story's logic out of whack, making one wonder why Sam is pining away for the wan, colorless Linda across the street when he's got someone much more exciting in the house.

    James Sanford

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