Having a film with Michelle Pfeiffer, Al Pacino and one of my all time favorites - Kate Nelligan, all directed by Garry Marshall (of the Pretty Woman fame) would seem like a no-brainer. I mean, how could things go wrong right? But, boy, did they ever go wrong, and I mean, wrong with a capital W, R, O, N and G! I have gone through seven circles of hell watching this horrible excuse for a film. The only thing that kept me going was not even Pfeiffer or Pacino, but gorgeous and incredibly talented Nelligan. Ever time the film managed to disappoint me, which happened every other minute, I was hoping for another scene with Kate Nelligan. What an actress... simply marvelous. But, everything else, absolutely sucked. The story is non-existent, but one should not even attempt to hint at it because it would automatically result in spoilers - that's how little of a story there is. This sorry excuse for a film starts with Al Pacino trying to get Michelle Pfeiffer interested in him. She has some strange form of a Borderline personality disorder, which may have been interesting to the writer, but it was so poorly portrayed in the film that it did not work at all (because it was not believable and it was presented inaccurately). He, on the other hand, suffers from inexhaustible and unrealistic amount of optimism. I mean, talk about white knight syndrome! He is trying to save her from whatever her inner demons may be, and she is constantly rejecting him. And that goes on and on, and on, and on, and on, and on for some 1 hour and 25 minutes of this film. The attraction-rejection starts around the 10-15 min mark and goes on until the very end. Each rejection is like a 10-15 minute game, so imagine how many times you get to see the same scene played out all over again. Just horrendous. And to think that ANYONE would believe that that type of torture would work as a film? This film has managed to prove to me that Hollywood filmmaking is purely based on chance. I can guarantee that no one who made a decision that this film should be made had used their brains; no, they must have had a pile of screenplays, and they threw a dart and it landed on this steaming pile of dung. And that's why it was made. There is no other option, believe me. I managed to stay until the bitter end, at first hoping for some satisfactory resolution, but later just to test my patience. The ending failed too, but as it was getting closer to it, I figured there will be nothing better in the end than before it. All in all, watch it only to see HOW NOT TO CREATE A STORY. It does not matter that it is supposedly a love story. It could have been any type of a story - it should simply never "evolve" this way, and the characters should never be written the way they were. Dialogues were atrocious. Characters incredibly unbelievable, with exception of Kate Nelligan's (who managed to save it somehow). Story was still born from the start and never moved anywhere. Various random scenes were thrown in for good measure or to try and break up the monotony. The mood is somber and it never changes. The characters have no arc, and nothing goes anywhere. This is one boring, depressing, incredibly dumb, immature, psychotic story put on screen by accident. No one in their right mind would want to make this film I guarantee you. What a shame, because with that cast and money, one would expect at least a mediocre result, but that was not the case here. Not even close to mediocre. Not even bad. Hardly terrible. More like - run away and run fast, and never look back. Just god awful in every way imaginable.
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