Meg Ryan was the romantic comedy queen of the 1990s. She made her fortune with her good girl next door persona in a series of hits. Attempts to breakaway from that persona didn't meet with a great deal of success. Addicted to Love, which featured a darker style of comedy than usual for Ryan, was one such attempt, but while it failed at the box office, is actually worth a second look. It doesn't feature the healthiest relationship of any Ryan love story, but it does contain some genuine laughs and real charm thanks to Ryan and her co-star Matthew Broderick.
Despite Ryan's top billing, it's Broderick who is the star. He was at the tail end of his movie career at this point and the double whammy flops of Godzilla and Inspector Gadget the following year would pretty much end his ability to headline a film. Here though, he's quite good. He plays Sam, a small town astronomer whose girlfriend, Linda (Kelly Preston), dumps him for a French chef during a visit she makes to New York City. Unwilling to accept her rejection, he travels to NYC and proceeds to stalk her, taking up residence in the condemned building across from her and her new boyfriend Anton's loft apartment where he begins to fanatically document their behavior hoping to find signs of weakness.
Ryan plays Maggie, Anton's ex-fiancee. She too is stalking her ex, but with plans for revenge rather than reconciliation. Soon she and Sam have teamed up and between them they set about dismantling Anton's life. They steal his credit card, release cockroaches in his restaurant, hide strawberries--which he's allergic to--in his pillow, and most importantly, begin framing him to make Linda think he's having an affair. Naturally, along the way Sam and Maggie begin to develop feelings for each other.
The humor is darker than in your typical Meg Ryan comedy and perhaps this explains why it wasn't one of her bigger hits. Maggie has a bit of an edge, including her wardrobe and desire for revenge. Her emotional and mental state isn't the healthiest, and yet her charm shines through anyway. Audiences might not have been able to accept this slightly different persona, but that doesn't mean she isn't excellent in the part. Broderick plays the hapless Sam and provides some laughs, but Ryan steals the movie as Maggie.
Ryan also gets one of the film's best dialogue moment when Maggie asks Sam to define love. After he waffles on until finally saying that it's something that can't be defined, she tells the following story. "When I was a kid, my father had this dog that started to get all weak and sickly. He takes it to the vet, he examines it and says a maggot must have laid eggs in the dog's butt. The baby maggots have crawled up, now they've started to grow, and eventually they're gonna eat the dog alive from the inside. He says it should be put to sleep, because it's an old dog anyway. But father won't do it. He takes the dog home, he puts it on the bed, he reaches up into the dog, picking out the maggots with his finger, one by one. It takes him all night, but he gets every last one. That dog outlived my father. That's love, Sam."
Tcheky Karyo plays Anton, the third character in this love triangle. There's supposed to be four characters in this dual couple situation, but Kelly Preston isn't required to do anything but look good. Anton starts as a stereotypical haughty, condescending Frenchman, but eventually he evolves into someone more three-dimensional that you can almost empathize with. This makes the pranks that Sam and Maggie pull on him, as well as the humor, even darker. It's easier to laugh at him when he's a caricature.
Audiences of the time might not have been ready to see a slightly edgier Meg Ryan, but enough time has passed since her heyday that it's worth looking at again. While perhaps not a true classic, there's enough laughs and charm to make it enjoyable.
