Anything But Love

Filmed in the colors of newborn Technicolor, plotted as a tribute to the conventions of Hollywood romance, filled with standard songs, it's by and for people who love those kinds of movies. Others will find it cliched and predictable, but they won't understand.

The film wears its heart--and its nostalgia--on its sleeve, but while it's clearly made by people who love old Hollywood musicals, it never stoops to being just a vehicle for smug genre references.

If this is such a cheesy, derivative movie, why did I watch it twice with such delight? Possibly because at its center it's profoundly authentic, and because the star turn by Andrew McCarthy, a moody, mercurial characterization, saves it from fairy-tale bathos.

So lackluster both as an homage and as a story in its own right that I was already forgetting it before it was over.

A pleasant, good-natured picture that struggles, gallantly if vainly, to recapture the style and sensibility of a studio musical on the severely limited budget of an independent film.

Not to be cruel, but the aspirations of the movie and its principals are so far beyond their reach" not to mention budget"that it arrives in theaters dependent on the kindness of strangers.

A low-budget musical so steeped in nostalgia that accusing it of being too old-fashioned is like accusing "Gone With the Wind" of being too Southern, (Standard Time-as this film was once titled) wears its heart, intentions and limitations on its sleeve.