Dedication (2007)

Screwed-up children's book author, Henry, loses his best-friend and collaborator, Rudy Roth (Tom Wilkinson.) In learning to cope with Rudy's death, he finally learns to love romantically with his new, not so manly collaborator, Lucy (Mandy Moore.)

The best thing about this film is Billy Crudup's character, Henry. He's an unpredictable, self-loathing human filled with love, hate and fear. His interactions with Rudy, and especially Lucy all carry a certain depth to them. It seems as though, screenwriter, David Bromberg is Henry, or close friend's with Henry. Lucy, on the other hand, brings out not only Henry's misogyny (as proclaimed by the filmmakers themselves,) but David Bromberg's as well.

The cloth that has supposedly threaded Henry and Lucy together is that of neglect, and abuse. Henry's less-than-perfect relationship with his girlfriend, Alison (Christine Taylor,) is merely a given, some sort of back-story to prove his psychosis. Lucy's dysfunctional entanglement with Jeremy (Martin Freeman,) her former thesis advisor and boyfriend of three years, however, is forty-nine percent of who she is. The other forty-nine percent of her character is her selfish, and critical landlord/mother (Dianne Wiest.) The remaining one percent is her barely luke-warm desire to illustrate.

Ultimately, her character is docile, and lacks both the edginess and quirkiness of Henry's. Mandy Moore's performance was bad, it's just her character is poorly written for this film. Her character only works at moments, when it illustrates Henry's misogynystic qualities with his impatient and utterly obnoxious responses; but still couldn't her character still provide this dynamic while hording the essence of a fuller human being at the same time? Henry, himself, even calls her a cliche, how can we, as the audience, resist to do the same?