IMDb plot summary: Loretta Castorini, a book keeper from Brooklyn, New York, finds herself in a difficult situation when she falls for the brother of the man she agreed to marry (the best friend of her late husband who died seven years previously).
Directed by Norman Jewison. Starring Cher, Nicholas Cage, Vincent Gardenia, and Olympia Dukakis.
(Spoilers ahead.)
Well, I am torn on this one. Turns out the screenplay was written by the fantastic John Patrick Shanley (author of Doubt, one of my all-time favorite plays), but this is one instance where all the parts didn't quite add up. There were some funny moments, and I really love Cher's character -- she's unique and interesting in a genre that cranks out a lot of surprisingly terrible female characters.
However, the movie just doesn't hang together overall for me. The subplots seem like random distractions instead of fitting thematically into the story, the romance comes out of nowhere and feels entirely unbelievable to me, and clearly Nicolas Cage's character is in no way ready to be in any kind of relationship ever, much less propose marriage to someone after a day. I didn't want Cher to be with the guy she didn't love, but I thought she deserved WAY better than a guy who talks her into sleeping with him with the ever-so-romantic line, "I don't care if you burn in hell." Apparently that is how you get the girl.
I had high hopes for this, but in the end it didn't make me laugh enough to overcome the weirdness of everything else going on.
2 stars.
Flickchart: #1267 out of 2104, below The Chalk Garden and above The Age of the Medici.
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