THAT’S weird. I’m sure that When Harry Met Sally had been made already. And didn’t it used to be funny? A Lot Like Love is a retread that is inferior in every conceivable way. Instead of Meg Ryan at the peak of her popularity and the sickeningly talented Billy Crystal, we have Amanda Peet, an actress for whom I have time, but only when she’s playing neurotic madwomen in indie films. And we have the grinning goon Ashton Kutcher.

Like When Harry Met Sally, this film follows its two protagonists from their first meeting (in an airplane toilet — classy) through a series of encounters during which it becomes increasingly obvious that they are perfect for each other. But rather than the barbed Nora Ephronisms that Ryan and Crystal got to fire at each other, we know that Peet and Kutcher are meant to be together because they both think sticking drinking straws in their nostrils is hilarious.

The film tries desperately to give the characters depth. They may be the kind of people who have sex with strangers in the bathroom of an LA to NY passenger jet, but look, Peet is laying flowers on her mother’s grave. She has suffered! And Kutcher chats with his deaf brother in sign language, which I’m sure is somehow meant to suggest that he’s a better than average guy.

Yet however much damage limitation the script crams in, these are still people who open their mouths to show each other the semi-masticated food inside (as if someone as thin as Peet would ever go near a convenience store pie anyway). So they’ll finally get together and have lots of little halfwit children. And not only are we meant to care, we’re supposed to celebrate?

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