The Oscar nominated film “God of Love” by filmmaker Luke Matheny shows to be a riveting comical display of pursuits for unreachable love that has a rather satirical twist. From the opening of the film some viewers would be oblivious to the humorous backdrop, but once the story begins and ends, it’s easy to see the humor in Mr. Matheny’s madness. From the actors and actresses amusing yet serious facial expressions, to the many witty lines that come from the narrator and main character’s mouth all played also by Mr. Matheny, it’s hard not to at least chuckle at the numerous droll scenes.
Ray (Luke Matheny) is a jazz singing, dart throwing ordinary guy, who has a one sided crush on Kelly (Marian Brock), drummer of their jazz group. After stumbling upon a box of love darts, Ray becomes insistent on targeting Kelly for her love.
Luke Matheny’s simple approach to convey how love doesn’t always go as planned and cannot be forced is ingeniously formatted in his attempt to deliver the message to the viewers. Mr. Matheny isn’t new to the conception of entertaining films especially short’s. His previous success in the video short “Earano,” which won the King Award for Screenwriting at the NYU First Run Festival, as well as well as Best Student Short at the Dam Short Film Festival in Boulder City, Nevada, proved him worthy of the 2011 Oscar Nomination for live action short film. Having directed, acted, edited and produced over several short films in his career, Mr. Matheny obviously proved to be no novice.
“God of Love” can be compared with similar romance comedies such as “The Ugly Truth,” which to an extent speaks of another sort of cupid who worked his magic through flirtatious remarks and witty banter rather than the handy love dart. And in the end with all of his handsome flare and dirty seductive conversation, he also learned that love was more complex than originally expected.
The “God of Love” was quite different in that the good guy doesn’t get the girl but the other guy on the side who has no interest does. In the end, Ray is granted the gift to become the God of love which seemed to be slightly confusing seeing his many mistakes in making other women fall for him as practice towards Kelly’s heart. The only proper and righteous choice made was using a dart to make his friend Fozzie (Christopher Hirsh) see the love stricken face of the one who desired him for so long. But who knows, maybe one good choice out of several bad ones were all that was necessary to be given the opportunity to give a gift to others Ray never really received, Love.
I definitely appreciated the perspective of this film. I thought it was a fresh look at the romantic comedy film.