The movie starts off promising with an A list cast and quite cute dialog. Diane Keaton and Elizabeth Moss play mother and daughter who rescue a dog off a freeway. This leads to romance and a wedding for with between daughter and the vet at the family Colorado country home. Kevin Kline plays Diane's doctor husband who loses the dog in the woods soon after and then the extended family including a sister played by Diane Wiest and her boyfriend and her son.It all gets annoying when they spend days and get injured looking for the dog. Diane's character seems insanely attached to the dog for no real reason risking her and her husband's life and getting him injured.Starts off with Woody Allen potential and ends in just a pile of doggie doo.Don't waste your time. It deserved to flop.

When you put Kevin Kline (why doesn't he get more roles? He's a lovely, subdued actor, and we certainly need more subdued actors), Dianne Wiest, Elisabeth Moss, Richard Jenkins, and Diane Keaton on the same set, you know the movie will have meat. It's not so much star-studded as talent- studded, which is much better if you like good film. By "good film" I mean a story that resonates with the viewer as real; a story filled with the tension that is our every day life, and best of all, a story that doesn't end with the hero saving the day and riding off into the sunset on a horse. The ending of this movie says, "There are good days and bad days and days you like your family and days you do not." The movie I'm talking about is called Darling Companion.The story centers around a rescued dog. The dog goes missing and everyone gets off the personal roller-coaster of their lives to try to find him. And that's when the lessons begin.The dog in this movie makes you want to rush out to adopt all homeless dogs. I don't know where they got him, but he is filmed from all the right angles. He isn't shot in close-ups like Lassie, but shown as part of a family's world in the way that dogs often come to be—the glue that holds everything together. I love the dog, whose real name is not in this review because after searching the Net for quite some time, I just couldn't find it. It should be in the cast list, but it's not. I'm just saying.The film is written by Lawrence Kasdan, whom we all remember from The Bill Chill. So apparently, in real life, Kasdan and his family adopted a dog and then lost him in the Rockies, where they extended their vacation three weeks until they found him. Darling Companion is based on that experience. It's like his famous Big Chill in that the plot is less important than the relationships between the characters. I like that about his films, and Darling Companion has that same rewarding interaction among its characters, which brings it all together. The husband and wife. The mother and daughter. The sister and brother. The mother and son. Is Kasdan the only writer/director who does that? Is he the only one who gives us one-on-one interactions in the context of a plot that really isn't all that important? Was there any resolution to the question of why Alex killed himself in The Big Chill? Where was the dog all those days he was missing in Darling Companion, and did anyone care?Sidebar. Can I mention here that the best part of The Big Chill was the music? We can all agree on that right?So here is a list of what you can take away from this movie: Dealing with a difficult mom; loving and hating your significant other at the same time; not caring what others think of you and being you anyway; making choices based on what feels good rather than what looks good; turning a car around, even on the highway, if you think you see something you should not turn away from.That's worth ten dollars right?

Here's The Lowedown on "Darling Companion" (A Drama DVD review)...Liked It!Become a fan of The Lowedown on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/The-Lowedown/386583633764Genre: 6 Movie: 6What's it about? Beth (Diane Keaton) saves a bedraggled lost dog from the side of the freeway on a wintry day in Denver. Struggling with her distracted, self-involved husband Joseph (Kevin Kline) and an empty nest at home, Beth forms a special bond with the rescued animal.What did I think? Not the fastest moving film ever made, but it was a nice touching story. It seems to be all about this stray dog, when in fact it was about a family healing itself through an outside source. This movie is worth the rental, if you are in the mood for a quiet film with a good family element.

I know what you're thinking, do we really need another must-love-dogs romantic comedy? Thankfully, contrary to marketing attempts, "Darling Companion" is not a romantic comedy. It's more like an outdoor adventure, relationship dramedy, mystery. Unfortunately, it did start as if it was a romantic comedy. Mother and daughter were annoyingly commiserating on the problems of finding a good man. Then they found a dog and met a cute doctor.I was squirming in my seat faster than they could say "I do." But then something funny happened on the way to the wedding. The boring romantic comedy angle was already wrapped up and they dropped the beleaguered jokes comparing man to dog. And then the film became a fairly simple but enjoyable treatise on the relationships and world views of a handful of family members and close friends.To me, the movie starts when Beth (Diane Keaton)'s dog goes missing. Her husband, Joseph (Kevin Kline), lost it, but he doesn't care. He only likes his money and telling people that he's a doctor. But his practice is just going to have to wait because she's not going home until they find Freeway (the beautiful Collie-mix Kasey). She is helped by Carmen, an exotic sex-goddess who freely admits that she's a psychic gypsy blessed with receiving images of the lost dog. Nephew Brian (Mark Duplass) likes Carmen; he does not like his future step-father Russell (Richard Jenkins). Russell pretty much likes everyone and everything. Joseph doesn't like the dog and he especially doesn't like alleged gypsy psychics leading his family on wild goose chases.The older members of the audience were laughing first, but eventually a little bit of humour in the form of funny lines came through. Kevin Kline was hilarious as the irritable elitist insulting hippie ideals and alleged gypsy psychics. The dialogue was quick, astute and savvy in navigating all the characters towards happiness in their relationships.If you can equate the search for the missing dog as a mystery, then it would be worth comparing this film to Woody Allen's "Manhattan Murder Mystery" (1993). A delightful discussion on relationships set to a mystery plot. It doesn't hurt that the cast includes a couple of Allen regulars (Keaton and Dianne Wiest).It takes awhile to realize that this is not a dull romantic comedy, but if you're looking for a mature, heart-warming relationship dramedy, "Darling Companion" eventually finds its way.