metro times: 'Darling Companion' a middle-aged date-night trifle

In "Darling Companion," Lawrence Kasdan delivers boomer angst and narcissism, distilled into a saline solution to better deliver treacle directly to the bloodstream.

Kasdan has long been the voice of his generation, the whiny, self-obsessed voice that elevated the worries of his peers into navel-gazing classics like "The Big Chill" and "Grand Canyon" and, with the script for "The Empire Strikes Back," proved you could still be neurotic at hyper-speed. This time he offers up a trifle of middle-aged date-night distraction, that still manages to broach aging, relationship malaise, parenting, mortality and the joys and sorrows of pet ownership.

The moral, that dogs are receptacles for all the excess of love that our fellow humans are too stubborn to take for themselves, isn’t enough to hang a feature around — but the script, by Kasdan and his wife Meg, tries anyway. It is not earth-shattering material, but if you’ve been clamoring to see Oscar-caliber actors stumbling around in the woods kvetching about their lives and blowing on dog whistles for 45 minutes, then you’ve come to the right place.

Read the full review here