Because I Said So (2007)

directed by Michael Lehmann

Maggie Karrs

Once a week, a group of my friends and I, all twenty-something women, gather in one of our kitchens, make dinner, and watch an episode of television. We’ve cycled through Big Little Lies, Unbelievable, Euphoria, and are currently in the most recent season of The Bachelor. On these nights we become the truest version of the peanut gallery. We’ve laughed and gasped at Laura Dern’s wails and Reese Witherspoon’s diva moments as part of the “Monterey Five,” questioned the romantic decisions made by Pilot Pete in the Bachelor mansion, and cheered on Merritt Weaver and Toni Collette as detectives Karen Duvall and Grace Rasmussen, fighting against a faulty justice system to protect women from a serial rapist. We also divert from the screen, sometimes choosing to spend the first half of the evening talking about our careers, books we’ve consumed recently, current events and pop culture, our own love lives. These nights, now considered ritual for us, are just the newest version of a lifelong tradition: film and television centered around women opening the door for me to spend time with the women in my life.

The first time I watched Michael Lehmann’s 2007 film, Because I Said So, it was with my mother. We were drawn in by the female stars: Mandy Moore, Diane Keaton, Lauren Graham, and Piper Perabo (we did not have nearly enough Mandy Moore in the mid-2000s. And where is Piper Perabo these days?). The movie opens with a montage of different mothers and daughters through the ages, and then quickly introduces us to the “Wilder Women,” a close-knit matriarchy with a conspicuously absent male figurehead. The basic focus of the film is the love life of the youngest Wilder, Milly (Moore). After experiencing a series of failed relationships amidst the marriages of her older sisters, Maggie (Graham) and Mae (Perabo), Milly finds herself again alone, albeit with a successful catering company. Her mother Daphne (Keaton), perceives her daughter’s single life as something that she can fix with a motherly touch, and decides to place a personal ad on Milly’s behalf on a dating website. Chaos ensues as two men pursue Milly, who for the first half of the film remains unaware of her mother’s schemes.

In various rewatches of the film, the relationships that I find captivating are not those of Milly and her two potential love interests Johnny and Jason (though Gabriel Macht is perfectly cast as a single-father musician with a heart of gold and Tom Everett Scott fits as a bland, somewhat overbearing architect), or even the eventual union of Daphne with Johnny’s father, Joe. I focus instead on the depth of the mother-daughter dynamic between Keaton and Moore, and the sisterhood of Moore, Graham, and Perabo.

The film often sidelines its men in ways that are both exaggeratedly comical but with threads true to life. In one scene, where the family is celebrating Daphne’s 60th birthday, the Wilder women perform a song for the rest of the family, which is interrupted by Milly’s annoyance that her mother is singing the wrong part. The ensuing argument is punctuated by the Wilder women’s significant others nodding knowingly and removing themselves from the room, as the women turn to face each other and hash out their most recent disagreements about Daphne’s meddling. Since my teen years, when my father senses a lively disagreement brewing between me and my mother, he laughs, says “mothers and daughters!” and then tends to flee the scene.

In recent viewings, I can see the holes in a largely by-the-books film. Daphne’s interference in Milly’s life is exaggerated to a point where it seems most self-sufficient adults would cut-and-run, or at least set hard boundaries. The economics at play don’t quite make sense, and several of the jokes teeter between dated and insensitive. There are a number of precariously carried cakes that are simply set pieces to be dropped, smashed in faces, and for one unfortunate three-tiered cake, launched unceremoniously off a cliff. The mere presence of Stephen Collins, after a slew of sexual misconduct allegations arose a few years after the film, makes me uneasy.

There are moments that continue to ring true to me, as when Daphne monologues to her daughters about a mother’s love, saying, “I mean, it's the most impossible love. You tell me when it ends. You tell me when it stops.” It catches me viscerally every time. A question that my mother has perhaps never posed verbatim, but the essence of which is a driving force in many of her actions. Keaton and Moore are both gifted at physical comedy, and Lauren Graham is delightful as the advice-giving psychologist of the family.

Then there is the picture of sisterhood. Not having biological sisters, a film like this one, or like the 2019 adaptation of Little Women, paints the experience in such warm colors. There are two separate scenes where the Wilder women go to the mall, each composed of a flurry of activity as the women grab and toss aside clothes, chattering excitedly as they pull items on and off and look for opinions. In the first, Daphne (whose own wardrobe involves a statement belt for every outfit) insists on buying a red, half-sleeved polka dot dress for Milly, who protests that the dress is neither her style nor a practical option for her. Her sisters point out that the dress is in fact something Daphne herself would wear. With the loving obtuseness only a mother can possess, Daphne buys the dress, and presents it to her daughter. It is expected that at any family gathering, the women will sing. I remember as a teenager wondering, despite loving my older brothers fiercely, what it would be like to also have a sister.

The last time I watched Because I Said So it was with three of my best friends, in one of the same quiet living rooms we often hold our weekly gatherings. We laughed and cringed accordingly at Daphne’s actions and the shared clumsiness of the two female leads. We critiqued the fashionability of the ever-present polka-dotted dress, deciding that elbow-length sleeves would be out of place on anyone. We debated the viability of each of Milly’s relationships, and how Johnny is dressed like he came straight from the 1950s, complete with a fedora and a green and yellow bowling-esque shirt. While we watched, we broke open two containers of ice cream, leading to the discussion of what ice cream flavor embodied each of our personalities, and broke down the most recent developments of our lives, including my friend Amelia’s latest “reckless sufferfest,” signing up for a 50k race in the mountains.

When Milly learns that her mother is responsible for Jason, and somewhat more indirectly, Johnny’s presence in her life, she is hurt. She refuses to speak to her mother, and inquires of her sister Maggie—who found out about the ad some time prior—how she could have broken the bond of sisterhood by not informing Milly of their mother’s meddling. Milly only forgives her mother when Daphne admits via voicemail that her intense meddling was the result of her fear that Milly would end up alone...like her mother.

Romantic comedies range in quality from money-grabbing attempts that tend to fall flat, to well-plotted, scored, and aesthetically pleasing pieces that give their characters depth. The beauty of the genre for me has never fully been about the film. The space in which I watch a film of this nature, and the spaces they enable for the women in my life to inhabit for a few hours, has always been the draw. When done correctly, they afford their female characters the same kind of voice and agency as women-driven shows. My mother and I spent countless hours watching Gilmore Girls together in my childhood, and when the show was revived for a four episode run in 2016, we drove 20 minutes down windy West Virginia roads from my parent’s farm into town to get the internet access needed to stream all six hours in one sitting, just the two of us together. We laughed, we cried, we took a break for snacks and yoga.

During a recent 25-day whitewater trip down the Grand Canyon, the five women in the group started having informal “happy hours.” Under the deep blue of the desert sky, we would gather on one of the rafts before dinner, pouring boxed wine or mixing “river margaritas” (a potent combination of Sea Quench beer, tequila, tonic water, and lime) in a Hydroflask, while telling stories from the day and brushing the sand out of each other’s hair. Throughout the trip we also broke wood together, scouted rapids, and discussed the best way to break down camp. On one sunbright afternoon, the day before one of our biggest rapids, Lava Falls, we did each other’s makeup, a sea of sparkles in the backcountry. One “Lady of the Grand,” Sophie, a master of crafts, made us all silver headbands from scrap fabric for the trip; I wore mine in some capacity every one of the 25 days we spent together. We created space for each other and ourselves to express femininity however we saw fit. As I’ve gotten older, the way I see a movie I once loved without reservation has changed. So too, perhaps, has my idea of the word “sister,” my understanding of the role “daughter”.

Because I Said So runs its plot out how you suspect it might. After a brief time apart due to her mother’s scheme and her reluctance to end her relationship with Jason, Milly chooses Johnny, the patient, artistic, single father. The movie ends with Daphne’s wedding to Joe, Johnny’s father, the man she found without looking. Most of the final shots, however, are focused on the four Wilder women. They are once again singing together, joyful voices rising together into the air, dressed, of course, in polka dots.

Maggie Karrs lives in Richmond, Virginia. She divides her time between outdoor activities, consuming as much media, text, and culture as possible, and trying to convince her friends of the virtues of Third Eye Blind.