No Blarney
Matchmaker Makes a Good Try at Romance

Hollywood has been making romantic pictures since the early days of Rudolph Valentino. In the past few years, the torch has been passed on to a decidedly female perspective with the movies of Nora Ephron (When Harry Met Sally... and Sleepless In Seattle) taking the lead. In the course of this paradigm shift, true romance has come back into romantic movies and audiences have turned pictures like While You Were Sleeping into sleeper hits.

The downside to these romantic comedies is their Cinderella fairy-tale quality which crumbles under the harsh glare of reality. As much as every woman would like Tom Hanks to be waiting for her on the Empire State Building, or as much as every man would like Sandra Bullock to charm her way into his life, these things just aren't real. Love doesn't happen by magic. Not in the 20th century, at least.

Then along comes The Matchmaker. While every other romance seems a little too perfect, the makers of this movie have taken a very unromantic angle. It's a movie about trying to NOT fall in love, despite all the effort fate is putting into it. It turns the tables on the stereotypical romantic comedy, and allows a cynic -- for a moment -- to believe in the magic of love again. Of course, to the matchmakers of Ireland it's really more like a science.

Set in the midst of an annual Irish matchmaking festival, The Matchmaker tells the story of an American woman (played by comic Jeneane Garofalo) who has no time for love. She has been sent to search for the Irish roots of a struggling U.S. senator (Jay O. Sanders) in the hopes of getting him re-elected. Wanting to do her genealogy work and return home to Boston, she finds herself besieged by the quaint customs of the small Irish hamlet and the interest of a young barfly (pubfly?) named Sean Kelly (David O'Hara).

The best thing about this movie is that it capitalizes on Garofalo's cynical charm. True, when one thinks of hopelessly romantic movies, one is more apt to think of someone like Meg Ryan or Sandra Bullock. Either of those actresses, however, would not have had the stubbornness that allowed Garofalo to make her character of Marcy real. In fact, if anything, she made her too real.

The worst sin in this movie is how quickly Marcy is won over by the charms of Sean. Of course the audience knows it's going to happen. Of course we expect it. Still, I can't help but think that half the fun is getting there. This movie has no foreplay, and once the two have admitted their interest in each other the movie turns in another direction which is not nearly as funny nor light-hearted as when it began.

There is more than enough to enjoy in this movie, if you go into it without too much expectation. The humor is entertaining, even if the movie isn't as romantic as it could have been. For my money, the vistas where (presumably) it was shot on location in Ireland are breathtaking. I also enjoyed the chance to hear some traditional Irish ballads being sung. Granted, this movie may be little more than a pot of Irish clichés thrown together, but I recommend it for a smile. It's definitely a good date movie.

MY RATING: 5 out of 10.

RATED: R
RUN TIME: 97 min.