I need some cotton balls or, as Woody Allen put it in Annie Hall, a sock full of manure.
First, the story.
Charlie is a cop in the city of New York. He has a neighborhood he knows well and he treats everyone with the same amount of respect, no matter if they’re rich or poor. He’s a good cop. Yvonne is a waitress who has had a rotten introduction to life in NYC. She has a husband who left her once he ran up an insurmountable amount of credit card debt. Her job stinks as a waitress and a judge has just entered her life into bankruptcy. It’s all coming unhinged. When Charlie forgets to bring tip money to Yvonne while she is serving him (not like that), he asks if she wants a piece of the lottery ticket he just bought or a tip. She half-heartedly chooses the lottery ticket. As luck would have it, Charlie and his wife Muriel win the lottery (along with a bowling team) and end up sharing the winnings with Yvonne (although Muriel is completely against it). Soon everyone finds out that money is not the key to all happiness.
Sans The Godfather III, Nic Cage really did bloom in the 90s as an actor. This is his first step into a romantic comedy for his talent and he pulled it off like a champ. Bridget Fonda, who was on the way down with her career (thanks Point of No Return) and needed something good to happen. They had a great chemistry onscreen. Cage and Fonda really did a fantastic job performing as the lovable losers who were just trying to do the right thing. All the parts in the film, including the ending, when they were together you wanted to stand up and cheer for the good guys. They were a fantastic example of how good characters could be together in a romantic comedy. I firmly believe that if the movie was about two single people who bumped into each other and won the lottery together, the film would have been fine.
Enter Rosie Perez’s Muriel.
How in God’s name could they allow Rosie Perez’s Muriel and Fran Drescher’s Nanny to co-exist in the same decade with that annoying nasal passage acting is beyond me. I realize that Perez’s character is suppose to be a nag and a terrible person. I realize this before she even gets onscreen time. As soon as she opens that trap of hers it makes me want to drive screw-drivers into my ears with a very large sledge hammer. It would feel better. I don’t blame Perez for this because I’m sure producers were telling her that a nasal-driven brooklyn girl was what they wanted. Having seen her in films like Pineapple Express, I know she doesn’t really speak in that high-pitched nasal talk and that she’s got some real range/talent. I don’t blame her at all for this, I blame the filmmakers for approving this. Her over-bearing, annoying wife role really ruined this film. When Cage isn’t the main whiner in the story, you know something is severely a-miss. What’s even crazier is that when she gets ‘hers’ at the end of the film, you still fill sorry for the guy who screwed her over. That’s how bad I can’t stand her in this role.
Anyway, outside of Perez’s character really ruining all the moments in-between the good moments of Charlie and Yvonne, the film is decent at best. It captures the light-hearted romantic period of that time, where it was cool to have two strangers fall in love by chance (see Sleepless in Seattle for perfect details). It just didn’t work out because of flaws in Perez’s character. I hate blaming that character, but it’s truly the reason why I couldn’t love this film.
Don’t feel too Blu
Much like Roxanne, you’ll find a lot of good visuals and audio to be had here. Since this movie was done in 1994, everything looks a bit better and feels a bit more recent than in Roxanne. The streets of NY look great in Blu-ray and seeing Yankee Stadium (the old one) in HD is breathtaking. Everything you want with the Blu-ray is here…. except the features.
Regretfully there are no features.
