BYE BYE LOVE (1995)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
Three divorced dads (Matthew Modine, Randy Quaid and Paul Reiser) spend the movie picking up their kids at McDonald's and eating at McDonald's and arguing at McDonald's, sometimes with their kids and sometimes with their ex-wives. Quaid's character despises his wife (Lindsay Crouse) and nearly destroys her house; Modine's character cheated on his wife (Amy Brenneman) and asks all the neighborhood moms over to his house (though whether he intends to screw them all or not is unclear), and lastly there is Paul Reiser who just wants his wife back (played by Jayne Brook who brightened my "Chicago Hope" TV viewings). Reiser's dad doesn't get along with his insolent daughter (Eliza Dushku) and incidents involving a stolen car and a house party never evolve realistically - all it requires is a solution involving a heart-to-heart talk in a treehouse!
There is one character that rises above the mediocrity and that is the late Ed Flanders as a retiree who works at McDonald's - his character's wife had passed on and he lives all alone. There is genuine, implied heartbreak and pathos with this "geezer" that all these other stock characters could learn so much from.
I do not hate "Bye Bye Love" and it is a likable, harmless enough picture. But it is just that - simply likable sans gravitas (strange coming from "Family Ties" creator and writer Gary David Goldberg). The movie coasts by on being cute and sweet with the simple homily that parents loving their kids defines them - the women in this movie are somehow foreign, shallow creatures who can't comprehend a divorced man's world (Janeane Garofalo as Quaid's date from hell, as funny as it is, falls in that category). Dishonest is being kind.
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