Good Heart, Soft Brain
FILM: Return to Me
DIRECTOR: Bonnie Hunt
STARRING: David Duchovny, Minnie Driver
GRADE: B-
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BOB (DAVID DUCHOVNY, LEFT) AND GRACE (MINNIE DRIVER) FIND AN IMMEDIATE ATTRACTION TO EACH OTHER IN BONNIE HUNT'S ROMANTIC COMEDY RETURN TO ME.
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In an effectively poignant scene near the beginning of Bonnie Hunt's Return
to Me, a loyal dog waits patiently by the door for a mistress who
won't ever come home. I was moved, and so, I could tell, were viewers all
around me. The death of a loved one is so painful, and at some level the
grieving lasts a lifetime, even when the survivor forges ahead. Unfortunately,
this subtle moment in a goodhearted movie ultimately is undone by a script with
a sadly limited imagination.
Written by director Hunt and Don Lake, Return to Me is the
story of Bob Rueland (David Duchovny), a Chicago architect and builder whose
deliriously happy marriage ends when his beloved wife, Elizabeth (Joely
Richardson), is killed in an auto accident. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the Windy
City, an aspiring painter named Grace Briggs (Minnie Driver) works as a
waitress at her grandfather's Irish-Italian restaurant and waits desperately
for a heart transplant she needs to counteract the wasting heart disease she's
battled since age 14. Elizabeth's strong heart, of course, goes into Grace's
otherwise hale body. Time passes and Grace heals, but Bob remains crippled by
grief despite the continuing efforts of pal Charlie Johnson (David Alan Grier)
to fix him up with available women. Then one all-too-contrived night, when
Grace has a clunky blind date parked at the bar while she works, Bob arrives
for dinner with a braying blind date on his arm, compliments of Charlie. Before
anyone can ask or respond to "Would you like that with angel hair or linguine?"
the scent of new love is in the air.
Even though the film's two romantic leads are very contemporary
stars, Return to Me is a decidedly old-fashioned movie. Its soundtrack
features Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, and its attitudes toward love and sex
cleave much closer to Doris Day than to Madonna. Once Bob and Grace start
dating, they go out for months, it seems, without ever having sex or even
flirting in an overtly sexy way. They act more like fond siblings than would-be
lovers. And let's not forget that those famed romantic comedies of the 1950s
had sexual chemistry even when the couple, in accord with the times, remained
chaste until their wedding night.
Some of this works. It's nice to see a man and woman who like each
other at times, and in situations when they aren't sliding between the sheets.
And, in other regards, the film effectively depicts the power, security and
pleasures to be found in extended families and enduring, lifelong friendships.
To that end, the film introduces a quartet of aging pals: Grace's grandpa,
Marty O'Reilly (Carroll O'Connor), his business partner Angelo Pardipilo
(Robert Loggia), and their two poker buddies, Wally Jayczaski (William Bonder)
and Emmet McFadden (Eddie Jones). Their patter is charming, and their mutual
affection is both bracing and convincing. Jim Belushi also checks in with a
self-effacing and funny performance as the husband of Grace's best friend,
Megan (director Hunt).
But, ultimately, it's impossible to overcome the clunkiness of Hunt
and Lake's script. The comedy sometimes stoops to jamming two corpulent old men
into one narrow doorway. Worse, the story relies entirely on a series of
unlikely coincidences. The future lovers just happen to meet. They happen to
bond at first sight. (I found myself groaning at their feeling they'd met
somewhere before, and I found myself squirming that Elizabeth's mourning dog
instantly warms up to Grace.) For the longest time, Grace refuses to tell Bob
she's had a heart transplant. Why, conceivably? And the fact that she keeps her
clothes on means he never spies the scar on her chest. Then, in the hokiest
coincidence of all, Grace finds in Bob's study the anonymous letter she wrote to her anonymous
benefactor. The cat's out of the bag, and only then can we have a third act
that consists entirely of the preposterous notion that both Bob and Grace are
undone by the fact that Grace's transplant came from Elizabeth. In three words:
false, false, false.
I hasten to concede, however, that Return to Me might be
critic-proof. The sold-out Saturday matinee I attended at the Palace was full
of viewers who liked the film plenty. They awarded the flick plenty of laughs,
and sniffles were audible all over the theater as the picture reached its
climax. In short, sometimes bad films please audiences in a way I can't account
for.
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