by SARAH ROWLAND

As refreshing as it is to see a romantic comedy where the lead male doesn't have a good 20 years on his leading lady, it still doesn't compensate for Diane Lane's piss-poor comedic delivery in Must Love Dogs. In fact, if it weren't for John Cusack carrying more than his share of the film, moviegoers would have been well within their rights to walk out half way through the advance screening.

We start off with Sarah (Lane). She's a gun-shy divorcee whose surround-sound biological clock is ticking so loudly that everyone - from her senile aunt to her nosy butcher - is scrambling to set her up. But she's not completely alone. In between blind dates, she has a team of on-screen clichés to keep her company - a campy gay best friend, an impossibly perfect dad and Carol, her meddling older sister without whom we wouldn't have a plot. You see, Carol goes behind Sarah's back and posts a profile of lil' sis on an Internet dating service.

Enter Cusack. Proving that it takes a lot more than a god-awful script and a misguided supporting cast to keep him down, Cusack chugs along as though he's completely oblivious to how bad this movie is. This could be because he's basically playing the patented lovesick anti-hero he invented in the '80s, and presumably kicks out whenever he's short on cash and/or imagination. He even sports a faded Ramones T as a gentle reminder of his punk rock lineage. And while his puppy dog eyes may be a little puffier than when he won over Ione Skye in Say Anything, and his jowls a little saggier than when he turned down a chance to bone Nicollette Sheridan in The Sure Thing, he can still pull off a funny romantic lead.

The opposite is true for Lane. At 40, she's never looked better, but alas, there's not a funny bone in her taut, aerobisized body. But in all fairness to Lane, the root of her bungled performance can probably be traced back to director/screenwriter Gary David Goldberg. What with his ill-fated jokes and awkwardly delayed editing, she really didn't stand a chance.

Must Love Dogs opens Friday, July 29

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