What Love Is

There is a useful directness to What Love Is, a comedy shaped by Mars Callahan with a firm understanding of its audience. In What Love Is, Cuba Gooding Jr. provides the anchor while Matthew Lillard introduces a contrasting energy. Without revealing later complications, What Love Is opens from this situation: When Tom comes home on Valentine's Day to a "Dear John" Letter from his girlfriend, he spends the rest of the night talking to his four best friends about woman, sex & love until five women show up and the battle of the sexes begins. The resulting its 1h 33m running time feels most convincing whenever What Love Is trusts behaviour more than explanation.

⁠

Cuba Gooding Jr. gives What Love Is its most dependable performance, finding a clear emotional intention beneath the plot. Opposite Cuba Gooding Jr., Matthew Lillard brings What Love Is a contrasting pace that prevents the central relationship from feeling flat. Sean Astin widens the ensemble of What Love Is through reactions that suggest a life beyond the immediate scene. Mars Callahan serves the cast of What Love Is best when a look or pause is allowed to finish before the story moves on.

⁠

At story level, What Love Is turns Tom and Valentine's Day into the source of its main tension. The role played by Cuba Gooding Jr. becomes the viewer's route through What Love Is, especially when Dear John begins to alter the situation. Mars Callahan gives What Love Is momentum by allowing choices to create consequences instead of treating each scene as isolated information. Even when Letter pushes the plot toward familiar ground, What Love Is remains attentive to what that pressure means for its characters.

⁠

The central idea running through What Love Is concerns embarrassment, status and the gap between confidence and reality. Cuba Gooding Jr. gives that idea a human scale, allowing What Love Is to remain accessible even when its world becomes larger. By returning to Dear John, What Love Is turns theme into a source of pressure rather than a message waiting to be delivered. The handling by Mars Callahan lets What Love Is leave a little interpretive room, which gives its better scenes an afterlife.

⁠

The craft of What Love Is is defined by comic timing built around character, supported by comic timing built around character rather than overwhelmed by decoration. Big Sky Motion Pictures gives What Love Is a production framework in which well judged reactions can remain connected to story. Made from a United States production context, What Love Is uses setting and design to clarify mood before dialogue has to explain it. The technical finish of What Love Is works because image, sound and editing appear to be serving the same immediate purpose.

⁠

Mars Callahan shapes What Love Is with an approach that feels unable to turn workable ingredients into a stable rhythm. The best directed passages in What Love Is establish an objective, let the characters respond and then allow the pressure to change naturally. The premise retains appeal even when the finished film struggles in What Love Is, particularly when Mars Callahan resists the urge to underline an already clear emotion. My main reservation about What Love Is is that explanation repeatedly takes the place of discovery, a limitation that interrupts rather than defines the experience.

⁠

For comedy fans who respond to personality and timing, What Love Is is ultimately a missed opportunity rather than a complete failure. Its most persuasive combination in What Love Is brings Cuba Gooding Jr. together with well judged reactions under the direction of Mars Callahan. The fact that explanation repeatedly takes the place of discovery prevents What Love Is from being entirely seamless. Even with that reservation, What Love Is has a clear point of view and enough genuine feeling to justify the journey.