Mad Love (Film Review)

1995 Touchstone Pictures
Directed by: Antonia Bird; Written by: Paula Milne
Starring: Chris O'Donnell, Drew Barrymore, and Joan Allen
MPAA Rating: PG-13; Running Time: 96 Minutes
The Nicsperiment Score: 7/10

Matt Leland faces enormous pressure for a high school student. Not only does he have to succeed academically, but he's got to take care of his much younger siblings as well. Matt's mother abandoned the family several years ago, and now his father works around the clock, to support his three children, and to avoid having to emotionally deal with his situation. It's all too much for Matt, a kid who's barely gotten his driver's license, to take, until Casey Roberts rides in on her midnight jet ski. Casey seems to be everything Matt can't: free, impulsive, and a risk taker. However, Casey's risk-taking soon gets her into trouble, and Matt finds himself giving into the biggest impulse he's ever felt: leave his life and responsibilities behind to go on the road and on the run with Casey. However, Matt will soon find that Casey's behavior might have some deeper roots...and that he doesn't have the tools to deal with them.

Mad Love is not, as the poster promises A WILD AND SEXY ADVENTURE. It is a nuanced and thoughtful character study about a co-dependent relationship between the natural caretaker, Matt, and his mentally ill girlfriend, Casey, who Matt is unknowingly enabling. I guess that description wouldn't sell movie tickets.

Mad Love is directed by Antonia Bird, a director known for bringing care and sensitivity to difficult subject matter. She does a great job of setting the mid-90's Seattle scene before digging into her characters' personalities and motivations, then sending them out into the wild to see how they'll interact. Of course, for someone looking for a romantic comedy, or even a straightforward romance, Mad Love won't scratch those itches--and it seems that these these are the ones mid-90's reviewers wanted scratched. Mad Love is a love story, but it's nearly a deconstruction of the usual presentation of cinematic love. 

As usual, Bird's direction brings out her actors' best work. Barrymore is excellent as the mentally ill, Casey, believable and never falling into caricature. As the steady, yet broken under the surface, Matt, O'Donnell feels less like a movie star playing a high school student, and more like a real person. Mad Love is a showcase for both of them, and both are pushed to their limits, yet succeed in the film's highly emotional climax, a requisite for any Bird film.

That's not to say Mad Love is without its flaws. The pacing in the film's middle sags a bit. Also, studio interference, which would explain the British Bird's reluctance to work in America afterward, seems to be at play here, noticeable in some profanity-wiping ADR, as well as an ADR'd, seemingly tacked on final monologue. Perhaps Hollywood simply didn't deserve Bird's presence, but Mad Love proves it would have been much better off with her around. Indeed, the "Manic Pixie Dreamgirl" trope Hollywood would find itself enamored with less than a decade later is not only presaged here, but dissected and presented realistically for what it would be in the real world. If someone were to show up, acting wild and uninhibited, seemingly for the sole purpose of bringing you out of your shell, that person would probably have something much darker running beneath the surface driving their behavior. It's harder to put a Hollywood shine on reality.