She Deserves Better Than Him, Better Than Me Too

Oh Mandy, you came and you gave without taking, so I watched License to Wed. And boy did that suck massively. I mean seriously, was I really supposed to laugh at anything in that movie? But anyways. Luckily Ms. Moore redeemed herself with the much more watchable Dedication where Mandy plays an illustrator picked to work with a children’s book writer, Billy Crudup (Almost Famous) with a massive case of OCD whose longtime illustrator, Tom Wilkerson (Michael Clayton) is no longer able to perform the task.

In Dedication, Moore was handpicked to get Crudup to deliver a new book within a month’s time. The relationship between the new partners isn’t a smooth transition as does all he can to break her while the publisher does all he can to make sure she gets the book done on time. And a tall task that is as Crudup doesn’t function well around others. Wilkerson was his best friend and a very loose phrase as theirs was mostly a working relationship.

The film is a romantic in the simplest sense as sparks fly the more time the two spend together, but Crudup’s eccentricities keep you wondering if the two could actually be compatible. Moore, who doesn’t show up in the film for some time, isn’t really the model of normal either as she deals with her mother/land lord (Dianne Wiest) who seems to want to be the latter more than the former. And the shady ex-boyfriend throws in a monkey wrench too. Dedication is much is a much more jarring than most romantic comedy fair in terms of writing, acting, and directing, but it is much easier to sit through than License to Wed.

Dedication gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.