LAWS OF ATTRACTION

REVIEWED BY CHARITY BISHOP

Our rating: 3 out of 5

Because of: sexual content

Rated:

A film with a great deal of heart behind it, Laws of Attraction is a favored type of romance: two people meet. They hate one another, and then somehow along the way start to fall in love. It's not typical because of the setting but isn't quite wholly unique because in some respects we've seen it before. But nevertheless it is sweet. Audrey Woods (Julianne Moore) is one of the top divorce attorneys in New York. She graduated from Harvard with honors and rapidly worked her way up into a partnership in a law firm. Her clients are wealthy, elite, and all suffering through bad marriages. Completely self-assured and self-sufficient, Audrey has no room for men in her life. Men lead to marriage, which leads to divorce, which means pain, suffering, anguish, and divided estates. There's just too much work and heartache to bother with it, despite the promptings of her struggling-to-stay-young mother Sara (Frances Fisher).

Then Daniel Rafferty (Pearce Brosnan) comes into her life. Cocky, charming in a farm hick sort of way, with mussed collars and stained ties, Audrey believes she can take him out in a single afternoon. But horror upon horror, Daniel is well known in the circuit, best friends with the judge, and isn't afraid to play dirty. She loses her case. Each determined to show the other one up after a series of disastrous replays, Audrey and Daniel are constantly pitted against one another in the courtroom. She loses one, then wins one, and on it goes in a never-ending cycle. The biggest blow comes when fashion designer Serena (Parker Posey) decides to get a divorce from her womanizing rock star husband Thorne (Michael Sheen). Serena was Audrey's client until Daniel stole her away, so in defiance Audrey has approached Thorne with an offer to win his case.

While the two ex-lovers battle it out in the courtroom, Audrey and Daniel are in for a battle of their own. After getting drunk and spending a disastrous one night stand together, they find attraction as well as repulsion in one another's less-charming attributes. It comes down to a battle over an estate in Ireland and the lawyers are dispatched to interview the staff. But a little too much illegal Irish whiskey may set them down the road to disaster... and wedding bells. It's true that we've seen a lot of the great moments on the trailer, but there are ones you haven't yet glimpsed. There's the humorous slide show shown at a lawyer's conference in which Daniel uses Audrey as an example. There's fighting over whether or not anchovies belong in salad. There's the instance where she turns up looking horrible at court, the one time he looks fabulous. It's an all-out battle of the sexes that becomes seriously complicated when love comes into the equation.

There are a lot of good points about the film. Despite being a divorce attorney, Daniel believes that most marriage problems could be solved simply by putting as much passion into fixing the problem as the couples do complaining about it. He does his job but when it comes to Audrey, he wants to fix the issue. He comes across as being a good guy, even though his methods are occasionally below the belt. He likes to rub Audrey's mistakes into her face, but isn't above being outsmarted either. Audrey starts to come around to his point of view, going from the cavalier attitude toward a couple's most important decision to wanting to fight for their relationship when it turns sour. The nice thing about these two is that they grow to like one another. There's nothing sweeter than seeing them pass notes in the midst of a trial to ask whether they should have Italian or Chinese for dinner, or sharing a glass of wine in the kitchen after a long day.

If it weren't for some serious flaws in moral thinking, I would recommend it in a heartbeat. Brosnan and Julianne have some good chemistry going and the story is worthwhile and also very funny. But there are some issues to contend with. Sexual dialogue comes in on occasion. Mild abuse of deity and language are thrown around (two uses of GD, a woman references multiple times that she wants her husband's balls cut off and thrown to the dogs in court, etc). There is a little violence but it's all slapstick. The biggest problem I had was with sexual content. Audrey and Daniel get drunk on their first date, run home, and hop into bed. The audience is treated to the sight of clothing flying in all directions (they aren't seen undressing, only waking up together the next morning). It's implied that Daniel used their encounter to gain an advantage; he steals her panties the next morning, and writes a quote on them she said about the case the following day in court. They are forced to sleep in the same trailer bed after getting lost, but there's no hanky panky. After getting married, they wake up in bed together again, but the marriage after that is celibate. 

Believing a woman's screams imply she is in danger, Audrey bursts in on a married couple having sex on the dining room table. They're covered up with a blanket and promptly stop, only to declare their marriage is back on track and they won't need their lawyers anymore. This isn't an issue per-say, but Audrey and Daniel are married by a justice of the peace rather than a minister. It provides the opportunity for some courtroom jokes but leaves the film without religious influence. There's also a lot of drinking -- wine with dinner, beer on their time off, illegal alcohol in Ireland, and a drink dubbed "Goat's Balls" that isn't meant to be consumed in quantity (they do anyway). It's really too bad that a couple of scenes had to ruin this film, for it's really rather cute on the surface, and does imply that marriage is worth fighting for, a moral that that couples and courts of this land need to heed.