Contrary to the anticipation of some, "Return to Me" is not
the sequel to James Whale's 1935 movie "Bride of
Frankenstein--which Leonard Maltin praises as a film with
"rich veins of dry wit running through the chills." In that film
Ernest Thesiger forces Dr. Frankenstein into making a mate
for his creation. Bonnie Hunt's new movie does deal (yeah
it's a stretch) with a nice-looking regular guy whose dead
wife's heart gives new life to a dying patient waiting
despondently for a new ticker. That's about where the
comparison ends. Remove the heart of the victim of a fatal
car accident, place it gently into the chest of an ebbing
shut-in, Grace Briggs (Minnie Driver) and voila--a new woman
friend for a disconsolate widower, Bob Rueland (David
Duchovny). Since the names of heart donors are not made
known to the lucky recipients, the odds that Bob and Grace
would coincidentally meet are about the same as the chances
of being struck by lightning on a clear day But OK, we can
overlook the credibility in a romantic comedy. What we
cannot disregard is the top-to-bottom banality of the
enterprise, a story without edge, a group of elderly characters
who are for the most part patronized by director and co-writer
Hunt, and an entirely formulaic piece of comedy-melodrama
with scarcely a moment of real drama and featuring repartee
engaged in by codgers without a genuine dab of wit.
The most basic convention of romantic comedies is that the
pair of lovers must be kept apart throughout the story,
predictably getting together in the concluding scenes after
they find one excuse following another to leave each other's
company. In "Return To Me" Bob and Grace do not meet at
all until at least one-third of the tale has unfolded, but no
matter: their encounter does not speed the pulse of this
monotonous action in which even a fatal auto crash takes
place off screen to avoid offending the targeted PG crowd.
Bonnie Hunt appears to think that the demographics for
this movie are folks who watch five hours of TV daily and
can't get enough of the stuff, so she feeds them more of the =
glop hoping to evoke the customary word-of-mouth, "I
laughed, I cried, I ate popcorn." "Return to Me" at least
substitutes an environmental cause for product placement,
opening on a big ape named Sydney who is kept in a zoo
home with at least 2/3 less space than he requires. Elizabeth
Rueland (Joely Richardson) as the principal caregiver of the
animal (who has taught him sign language) delivers a
heartfelt address to potential donors at a black-tie affair
attended by her husband, Bob, an architect who soon
thereafter winds up in a car accident that kills his wife. =
Elizabeth's heart is transplanted into Grace's chest, allowing
Grace to emerge from the hospital and resume life with her
extended family--two of whose antiquated members own an
Italian-Irish restaurant.
The subplot involving an extended card game that engages
a circle of friends including Marty O'Reilly (Carroll O'Connor)
and Angelo Pardipillo (Robert Loggia) is patronizing. Hunt
treats these elderly men as cutesy, harmless individuals
whose great joy in life when they are not bowling or shuffling
the deck is playing Cupid to Grace--who seems never to have
had a date in her life. When the camera is not on Grace and
Bob who shyly test the waters of romance with each other,
we see increasing scenes from the lives of the codgers and
also from the overpopulated household of Megan Dayton
(Bonnie Hunt) who is married to the graceless Joy (James
Belushi).
Nevertheless, this could be your kind of comedy if you 1)
think that a nun riding a bicycle in Rome is amusing, 2) want
to watch James Belushi do a bellydance, 3) enjoy a
repetitious gag about people comparing themselves to the
ape Sydney, 4) like to see a working man's wife's face
contort whenever her husband says "hell" or "damn" in front
of the kids, 5) consider Grace amusing when she dumps
bottled water into the sink of the Irish-Italian restaurant and
fills it with tap water to get back at a whining customer, 6)
think that David Duchovny should play any role but the one
he was born for--Mulder on the X-Files.
(C) 2000 by Harvey Karten,
film_critic@compuserve.com
Copyright © 2000 Harvey Karten
