When I saw that Meg Ryan and Andy Garcia, two of my personal favorites, were the leads in this movie, I decided to watch it, despite the fact that I'm not often drawn to this type of film. Through some sudden onset of masochism, I stayed grimly in my chair, to the end, but frankly, after twenty minutes I was ready to pack it in.
This may not be the worst script ever, but it ranks down there with the worst of them. Andy Garcia, who has done some good work in other films, is totally unconvincing as an airline pilot. You could no more envision him in command of a seventy-five ton 737 than you could Dick Butkus dancing the Nutcracker. None of the character traits that define pilots, such as extreme self-assurance bordering on arrogance, self-reliance that easily becomes isolation, and a certain coldly amused view of the world and everyone in it, are present in Garcia's character. Some of that is him, mis-cast, but most of that is due to the script.
Meg Ryan is treated even worse. She is simply not a sympathetic character. Okay, you're saying to yourself: "Look, dummy, she's an alcoholic. She's not supposed to be Mary Poppins." I have, unfortunately, a more than casual acquaintance with a real alcoholics, and of course they're not sympathetic, when they're drinking. But the point here is that there is nothing in Ryan's character worth redeeming. It's not that she's so bad, it's that she's so pointless. The ultimate irony here is that the writes don't understand alcoholism at all. The worst and most evident aspect of the alcoholic personality is the extreme level of selfishness and self-absorption --nothing and nobody else matters. But the writers choose precisely that trait as her path to redemption. When she leaves husband and child, and goes off to "find herself", she begins to heal. That's laughable. Anyone who knows alcoholics also knows that they never have any trouble at all finding themselves. It's finding or even looking for others that's the problem.
The result is a chaotic swirl of pointless shouting and desperate facial expressions, culminating in the scene on the lake, where she falls off the canoe and into the depths, dragging her husband with her. By that point, Ryan and Garcia notwithstanding, I was fervently hoping that they would drown together, and leave the rest of us in peace, to watch re-runs of My Mother the Car.
This may not be the worst script ever, but it ranks down there with the worst of them. Andy Garcia, who has done some good work in other films, is totally unconvincing as an airline pilot. You could no more envision him in command of a seventy-five ton 737 than you could Dick Butkus dancing the Nutcracker. None of the character traits that define pilots, such as extreme self-assurance bordering on arrogance, self-reliance that easily becomes isolation, and a certain coldly amused view of the world and everyone in it, are present in Garcia's character. Some of that is him, mis-cast, but most of that is due to the script.
Meg Ryan is treated even worse. She is simply not a sympathetic character. Okay, you're saying to yourself: "Look, dummy, she's an alcoholic. She's not supposed to be Mary Poppins." I have, unfortunately, a more than casual acquaintance with a real alcoholics, and of course they're not sympathetic, when they're drinking. But the point here is that there is nothing in Ryan's character worth redeeming. It's not that she's so bad, it's that she's so pointless. The ultimate irony here is that the writes don't understand alcoholism at all. The worst and most evident aspect of the alcoholic personality is the extreme level of selfishness and self-absorption --nothing and nobody else matters. But the writers choose precisely that trait as her path to redemption. When she leaves husband and child, and goes off to "find herself", she begins to heal. That's laughable. Anyone who knows alcoholics also knows that they never have any trouble at all finding themselves. It's finding or even looking for others that's the problem.
The result is a chaotic swirl of pointless shouting and desperate facial expressions, culminating in the scene on the lake, where she falls off the canoe and into the depths, dragging her husband with her. By that point, Ryan and Garcia notwithstanding, I was fervently hoping that they would drown together, and leave the rest of us in peace, to watch re-runs of My Mother the Car.