Enter Sal (Matthew Lillard), Tom's "player" friend who always has a string of ladies, but never gets emotionally close with them. He tells Tom that he has invited a string a "skirts" to the party since he didn't want to spend Valentine's Day with just his guy friends. Sal shares his own sad news that he broke up with his girl this morning and then she had the audacity to show up at his bar with a new man. Soon, Ken (Mars Callahan), the married upstairs neighbor and friend, pops in and the guys are giving their two cents worth of advice to Tom, when in walks Wayne (Andrew Daly), childhood chum and recently "out" flaming homosexual. Wayne announces he is madly in love and is going to be married. Foul-mouthed Sal goes on a tirade about how he's known Wayne since childhood and how he is not gay and resents Wayne and the fact that he is always throwing his sexual preference in Sal's face. Finally, George (Sean Astin) arrives and he seems to be the most calm of all. George is a tree-hugger, as the other guys call him, and just wants to find a nice, reasonable girl who doesn't play games. As the group discusses women and relationships, trying to make sense of why Sara left, they all talk about how they deal with women, throwing out different theories. Ken is maligned as "whipped" because he loves his wife, yet we see that they have a special relationship and she doesn't demand that he come home, he simply wants to. Sal hurts women before they can hurt him. Wayne is proud of his sexuality and therefore talks about it all the time, but Sal takes it as a personal affront. Amidst all of this drama and chat, the ladies arrive.
As Tom opens the door, he has a brief fantasy that each of the girls is a stripper and they do an erotic pole dance as they enter. This was strange and kind of threw me out of what was happening. It just seemed odd and gratuitous, not adding anything more than flesh to the movie. (Although considering how little I enjoyed the overall film, maybe this did add something to the movie and that was why they threw it in.) The girls immediately head to the bathroom and begin their own steady stream of vulgar talk. Rachel (Gina Gershon) seems to be the ringleader and she does hair for porn stars. She announces that she doesn't want a man to tell her he'll always be there because then she'd know he was a liar. She accuses Laura (Anne Heche) of playing the "good girl" role since she has only slept with three men, yet she performs oral sex on countless men and plays that off as if it doesn't matter. Katherine (Tamala Jones) dated Sal once and extols the virtues of the size of his member, and Amy (Jud Taylor) is the naïve girl of the group, not really getting what the girls are saying. The voice of reason of the group is Debbie (Shiri Appleby), who tries to keep the girls from fighting.
Eventually, the girls emerge from the bathroom and pair off with the guys to discuss relationships. While there is some clever handling of characters finishing each other's sentences as the camera jumps from one pair to another, it just felt tiresome. Sal and Rachel get together and he learns to be a gentleman, Laura finds a friend in Wayne as they discuss a love for expensive shoes. George naturally gets with Amy and she seems to be the one most in tune with "what love is" of the whole group. When Sara inevitably arrives at the house, most everyone has left and Tom bares his heart to her. You know that they will probably get back together, but the whole film just feels less than satisfying and you don't really care one way or the other.
On watching the making-of featurette, I learned that this movie was filmed in 9 days (I found that easy to believe) and that Mars Callahan had the cast watch His Girl Friday because that is the feeling he wanted to convey. I definitely noticed the style early on, but I didn't like it. It felt like more of a play with everyone really over-acting and the lines being said it a rapid-fire, staccato manner. Yes, this is an old-fashioned style, but the vulgar topics of conversation stood in stark contrast to this dated method of acting and I found it disconcerting. While none of the acting was bad, per se, some was so over-the-top (Wayne and Sal especially) that I found it annoying. Also, while I am certainly not a prude, the level of vulgarity in the movie just seemed unnecessary, almost like it was thrown in to distract you from the lack of substance. Callahan seems proud of the fact that he hopes he offends some people because that would make him happy, as he stated in the making-of featurette. Perhaps he should focus more on trying to make a good movie than trying to offend people and then we'd all be happier. One thing I can say is that I liked the few songs that formed the soundtrack and those were really good choices. "Groove is in the Heart" by Dee-lite and "Unbelievable" by EMF are always good selections to hear.
Overall, although I really enjoyed watching Cuba Gooding, Jr. in his role, I can't recommend this film. I also really like several of the actors who star here, namely Sean Astin, Anne Heche and Gina Gershon, but watching What Love Is was a chore. Skip this one.
