User reviews

How did they manage to create such a beautiful film, a pretty love story, when the story is about two nutters spying on their former partners. When you think about what the story is about, and how far Sam (Matthew Broderick) and Maggie (Meg Ryan) are willing to go in order to get back to (and at) their former partners you would think that both should be either jailed or institutionalized. However, Addicted to Love, manages to create a fairly romantic love story out of it, without us ever doubting the sanity behind their actions. Both Matthew and Meg are here in roles they have portrait many times before in other films, while the star of the film is Tchéky Karyo. You end up hating him and loving him at the same time, feeling sorry for him one minute, wishing him all the worst the next. This is crucial to the story, bringing me to the conclusion that it is Tchéky that really makes the whole film work. One could criticize that even though the idea is original, the story isn't, with no unexpected turns or twists along the way. Simple, but pleasant film. 6/10

This generally enjoyable comedy should have been much better than it was, considering all the talent that worked on this film. The problem is, it isn't dark enough to be a dark comedy, but it is too dark to be a romantic comedy. Therefore, some of the revenge seemed too mean-spirited, and some of the sweet moments seemed out-of-place. BUT, even with that big of a problem, I still enjoyed the film. It was consistently funny and entertaining, and Broderick and Ryan both gave good performances. The best performance, however, was by Karyo, and he was probably my favorite thing about this movie.

Revenge, that's the ultimate drive behind this story. Take revenge on your ex, who has cheated on you. Matthew Broderick and Meg Ryan, both have been dumped by their former lovers and now they both wanna take revenge. Will they be able to and will it mend their broken heart?

Bitter sweet romantic comedy. Not the best, but certainly quite funny and charming.

When you hear the words `romantic comedy', the first thing that springs to mind is some sugary, smiley, big-haired, feather-light Julia Roberts escapade. `Addicted to Love' presents us with the polar opposite to this, even if the premise is pretty the same as you'd find in the usual rom-com. The result is a deft, reckless, amusing and entertaining heavy-handed movie. There isn't much to bicker about here.

Meg Ryan and Matthew Broderick show tremendous colour and prove to be likeable characters as the vengeful stalkers. Tcheky Karyo is funny as the clumsy French fool. Kelly Preston is the least convicted of the four main characters, but is still relatively good.

The film has its own generally funny slapstick moments that compensate for the lack of verbal wit. The narrative that follows is good enough to keep you wanting more, and the jokes are all very well timed. The title Robert Palmer song adds to the reckless, but endearing epitome of the film. The directing styles aren't amazing, but they're hip and stylish for the most part.

Overall, it isn't film of the century and is far from outstanding, but `Addicted to Love' is original, entertaining and very funny for the most part. I give it 6.8 out of 10.

This is a romantic comedy with a rather hard edge, or, to put it differently, a European-style farce with a too cushy ending.

Apparently, this film was conceived as a Meg Ryan vehicle, i.e. as a product suitable for her established screen persona. This was a mistake. The cast choice (and the marketing) make the outcome of the film blatantly obvious and that takes away too much suspense from the viewing experience. Also, the film makers did not have the courage to bring the misfortunes heaped upon Anton Depeaux (played very well by Tcheky Karyo) to their logical conclusion. It's designed as a chick-flick and thus everyone's gotta be happy at the end. A more emotionally ambiguous ending could have turned this into something special.

Astronomer Matthew Broderick sets out to spy on his ex-girlfriend and her new lover; when the man's jilted fiancée comes into the picture, the two conspire to bust up the budding romance. Amiable, rascally, but ultimately predictable comedy is more about transitory love than love addictions. Sunny Meg Ryan gets to work with a little more shading and edge than usual--and she works well with Broderick--but the second-half of the movie skitters around trying to come up with an ending (the finale is cute, like the rest, but some of the wind has already gone out of the picture's sails). Director Griffin Dunne stages a few beautiful comedic scenes (as with the restaurant critic), but Broderick's 'friendship' with the new man in his girl's life is just silly, and the whole conceit of Broderick and Ryan setting up shop in an abandoned building right across the street from the loving couple is fairly ridiculous. Still, there are finely wrought, surprisingly telling moments in the movie, such as the two leads sneaking over and going through the things in the love-nest or Kelly Preston telling her Frenchman that she would sell pencils on the street with him if she had to. "Addicted to Love" is better than it had to be. *** from ****

This film is a sweet punch in the nose in the else so flat land of comedy these days. A mischievous story told a little differently, with excellent cinematic solutions - film within film - draws your attention in. Griffin Dunne, known as actor and producer, made an interesting directing debut. Broderick, Ryan and Karyo use all the tools provided, and do a good job of it. It is brutal and fun.

thank god i didn't pay to see this movie. alas, a late-night free showing at the theatre down the street was simply not enough to add any semblance of reality to this clunker.

as if the plot isn't bad enough, meg ryan and matthew broderick are so awkward as would-be lovers, i'm surprised there's not more footage of them tripping over each other.

and that inevitable kiss? smarm central. i haven't seen a kiss that awkward since i was in the sixth grade and my boy friend barney (yeah, who am i to talk?) leered "do you wanna french?" at me across the playground.

do yourself a favor and stay at home to wash your hair instead of seeing this movie.

Sam is an astronomer who has been together with his school teacher girlfriend Linda about forever.Then she takes a job in New York and finds a new man in her life, a suave French restaurateur Anton.He settles to an abandoned building across the street from Anton's apartment.He starts spying on Anton and his ex, he even borrows a camera obscura from his observatory which projects a life-size image from the apartment.Later he is joined by Maggie, Anton's bitter ex with vengeance on her mind.Now those two try to break up their old sweethearts, in a way or another.Addicted to Love (1997) is actor/director Griffin Dunne's directorial debut.And it's a very nice debut.Matthew Broderick does top-notch work as Sam.His character is a nice guy who ends up making the wrong decisions.Meg Ryan does a very nice job as Maggie.Her character may be a little annoying from time to time, but I guess she grows on you.Kelly Preston is terrific as Linda.Tchéky Karyo is brilliant as Anton.Maureen Stapleton makes a marvelous Nana.Nesbitt Blaisdell is very good as Ed Green.And so is Larry Pine as Street comic.Director's late great father Dominick Dunne portrays Matheson.The movie has pretty many funny and tragicomic scenes.One of them is when Linda's father reads the note to Sam his daughter has left.It is quite intriguing to watch all those ways they use to break up the couple and to make Anton's life miserable.The vendor's monkey wearing lipstick kisses Anton.They plant roaches in Anton's restaurant when a famous critic is dining there.You start feeling some sort of pity for the man when Maggie has caused him an allergic reaction from strawberries and Sam accidentally hurts the guy in a physical way.In a series of romantic comedies this is pretty original.

This movie was no more than a typical love story. Though Meg Ryan for a change did not look like the "nice girl next door", she still played the same role as in her other movies. Both her and Matthew Broderick were very "cute" in the movie, and the move was something that is just nice to watch at home on video, but all in all, it was not anything incredible

Better than average plot but not enough to raise it above B-level.

I think Meg Ryan's star status worked against her because her cute reputation undercut her tough character. However, she proves that she can do something besides "bubbly" and is pretty good in a more edgy role.

Tchéky Karyo was excellent as a semi-likable French guy. One common weakness in romantic comedies is that the viewer can't understand why the "nice girl" would fall in love with the "bad guy." In this movie, we can she why she loves him and, by the end, we even like him a little too. Good writing and acting.

Not Matthew Broaderick's best performance... fairly uneven. He doesn't do "hopelessly in love" very well. Broaderick looked great, even when disheveled. For that matter, all the characters look great.

Kelly Preston is pure cardboard but it sort of works because three developed characters are probably enough in a Romantic Comedy.

The set (the hideout, especially) stole the show. The sound was unusually good for a fluff movie.

Just a point of clarification... Sam, as an astronomer, is familiar with a tool used many decades before for observing distant objects, called a camera obscura. It works very much like an overhead projector, but it has no light source of its own. A lens and/or prism receives an outside image and projects it upon a flat wall of a darkened room using the light from the outside image. See http://brightbytes.com/cosite/what.html

On several occasions in the film when the girlfriend and the boyfriend are moving about in the other apartment, you will notice Maggie or Sam turning the camera obscura to follow the action, and it moves the projected image.

The use of this astronomical tool adds much needed depth to the Sam character, and the "projector" is perhaps the only metaphysical allusion in the whole film.

Addicted To Love is the predictable story of a boy meets girl, boy loses girl etc etc. But then there's the whole delightful set up of spying and sabotaging someone else's relationship with an unlikely partner.

Matthew Broderick plays the typical nice guy with lovely ideals and a desperation that's funny to watch. I love the Milkyway Man's tee-shirt. Also loved the "What's your name?"/"Mike."/"What's your name, Mike?"/"Sam." lines! Meg Ryan is great in a different role; this time someone who's hardened by a broken heart and closed to new relationships.

I loved that our protagonists were also antagonists, that no one was really what they seemed in the first place. Overall, the movie was so enjoyable but I think lacked some indeterminable thing that could've made it more than just a video store hit.

Brilliant astronomer Sam (Matthew Broderick) is totally in love with small town girl Linda (Kelly Preston) who's never been away from home. She goes away to NYC for a job. He's devastated when she sends him a Dear John letter. He goes to NYC to track her down. He finds her living with Anton (Tchéky Karyo), and he sets up various equipment to watch the couple from across the street. One night, he's interrupted by mysterious Maggie (Meg Ryan) who is angry with her ex Anton. Together they bring havoc to Anton life.

This starts as a dark comedy by director Griffin Dunne. Meg Ryan is playing against type by being a bitter angry chick. She is the MPDG before the phrase was coined. I can certainly understand the loop people were thrown into way back when the movie first came out. Seeing it now with more time past, I can appreciate the comedy. She works as this obsessed vindictive chick, but is able to keep her cutie charm.

Matthew Broderick is also not the usual rom-com material. He's way too weak and not the alpha male common in a rom-com. He's funniest when he's most pathetic.

This usual pairing is a challenge when this movie goes into traditional rom-com mode. But Meg Ryan is able to bring out the charm at the right time. That's probably the saving grace of this movie. However I could see a darker scarier actress who could have made this even more interesting.

There is a big difference between a 7 and a 6 to me. I tape and keep any movie that is a 7 or better. I don't tape or keep any movie that is a 6 or less. So, when I have to make a decision on a movie that could go either way, it is a tough call. I figure this movie is about a 6.5. Rounded up, what do you have?

Even then, I could only give it a 6.5 because 1) I love Meg Ryan. 2) Romantic comedies are my favorite genres. 3) The ending was fairly nice. It took all that just to get a 6.5. That tells you a lot.

This movie was slow and sometimes boring and almost always not engaging. I was extremely disappointed in the chemistry (or lack thereof) between Ryan and Broderick (whom I also like). The writing failed to grip the audience. The plot idea is preposterous. And, the comedy part of "romantic comedy" was largely absent. Too bad. It could have been a good movie ... if it was just a different movie.

New York –1990s. Sam is a brilliant astronomer, who has two passions -the sky and Linda, his first and only love, a schoolteacher in the little Midwest town they live in. But all hell breaks loose when Linda has the opportunity to spend two months in New York, and falls in love with Antoine, a French guy who owns a restaurant and knows how to talk to ladies. Sam cannot accept to be dumped just like that. He goes to New York, settles in a ruined building facing the two lovebirds' apartment, and records every detail of their life, hoping to find a pattern that would indicate the end of the relationship and therefore his chance to get Linda back. This could have gone on for a while but Maggie appears. Ex-girlfriend of Antoine, she is as unwilling as Sam to let go of her love, but her approach is somewhat more active. You would not want her as an enemy –that's for sure! Poor Antoine will have plenty opportunities to test the strength of his love. So will Sam and Maggie, who are in for a few surprises… With no more ambition than to offer a good moment to spectators, 'Addicted to Love' belongs to the 'Only You', 'French Kiss', and other 'While you were Sleeping', funny, light and heart-warming. Meg Ryan is really good at it.

Rather unusual movie in the context of recent Hollywood, which with a just slightly harder edge and less sympathetic soft-edged casting than Ryan and Broderick could have achieved a delicious nastiness. The scenes of the two of them wallowing in their voyeurism with the slightly hazy images of the camera obscura forming a giant backdrop are an occasionally superb portrayal of unabashed spying and scopophilia. The descent of Karyo from stylish, self-confident restauranteur to an unemployed disaster encased in plaster, desperate for someone to scratch his back, is surprisingly unsentimental and clear-eyed. Even the obligatory happy ending doesn't dilute the pervasive grimness as much as it might have done. The film has a gritty, often intriguing visual look, helped along by Ryan's odd off-kilter wardrobe - it stops short of truly hard-hitting commentary and is sometimes too sentimental or prone to knockabout comedy at the cost of pursuing its central possibilities, but it's distinctive at least.

I apologize if this is more about Meg Ryan than the movie but I just saw this flick for the first time tonight despite meaning to check it out for years frankly. I just expected more from Meg Ryan -- more from her career to be honest.

She plays her standard semi-bimbo, semi-slick and yet semi-alluring chick with little substance and not much thought it seems for how her dialogue progresses -- DOA and the Presidio some to mind. Her career is chock full of meaningful characters that defined themselves with any number of strong emotional traits. Even her small supporting role in Top Gun was incredibly well done, despite the arguably contrived and cheesy nature of the film (you have to admit -- cheese doesn't get better). She was electric in that movie -- Harry Met Sally of course is another. You felt her true emotion. I'm a hetero male so it takes a lot of soul-searching to write something bad about Meg. LOL. I just think she's a little one dimensional in a lot of her films and Addicted to Love is one of them. I have no idea what her character is truly thinking in most scenes and what her motivation is. I think that a lot of her troubles are poor script choices. But no one is forcing her.

I would skip it or wait for cable.

This is by far one of my favorite flicks. Broderick is very funny but i really enjoyed his look. Meg is great, and i don't generally enjoy her stuff. but the real scene stealer is Tchéky Karyo as anton. his rape your skull line is priceless! this is a rare kind of romantic comedy and kudos to director griffin dunne for a quirky and offbeat love story. 10 out of 10

This number is a great little screwball comedy for the 90's. Meg Ryan and Matthew Brodrich have both been dumped for another. Each others another. So Meg convinces Matthew to use his astromical talents to help even the score. Meg is just a little edgier than her normal cutesy charactors. A fun film for a rainy night or any night you need a laugh or two.

Stick in the mud Sam (Matthew Broderick) stays home while he is, looking for life, Linda (Kelly Preston) goes to the big city and is seduced by a French restaurateur (Tchéky Karyo). Naturally, Sam gets the courage to recover his lost love and is detoured by her flamboyant affair. So, he plots and plans to get her back using devious methods. Inter a mysterious intruder Maggie (Meg Ryan). Looks like Frenchie has an ex with the same intention as Sam.

*** Beware of girls bearing strawberries ***

Will they get their Loves Back?

Will they want them?

What else could possibly happen?

By now do you care?