The Australian romantic comedy Love and Other Catastrophes may not be derivative of the similarly named Love and Other Disasters -- in part because, well, that second film came out a decade after the first. But that doesn't mean Catastrophes isn't hugely indebted to other films, specifically, the wave of early 1990s nostalgia-driven ensemble films about young hipsters finding themselves. Singles and Reality Bites are not only evoked here, they are almost directly copied. Much like directors Cameron Crowe and Ben Stiller in those films, rookie director Emma-Kate Croghan wears her love of culture on her sleeve -- most of it cinematic, where her predecessors may have been a bit more music-oriented. Like them, she also criss-crosses storylines, makes regular use of title cards, and revels in the comic absurdities of relationship politics. This isn't to say Love and Other Catastrophes isn't pleasing enough in its own right. Not only is it a nice showcase for some actresses who would go on to have prominent Hollywood careers (Radha Mitchell, Frances O'Connor), but it's also more progressive than its American counterparts, featuring a lesbian relationship between Mitchell's and O'Connor's characters. Still, at heart these are basically simple boy-meets-girl, girl-meets-girl stories -- doused in pop culture cleverness and irony -- and they're ultimately a lot lighter than they are catastrophic. Although Croghan was nominated for Australian Film Institute awards for both this and her follow-up, Strange Planet (1999), she has not made another film since.