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Return To Me, 2000.
Directed by Bonnie Hunt. David Duchovny, Minnie Driver, Carroll O'Connor,
Robert Logia, Bonnie Hunt, James Belushi, David Allan Grier.
Bob and his wife Elizabeth are living a storybook life.
He is a successful Chicago contractor, she is a passionately committed
zoo administrator. One night, after a zoo fundraiser, she is killed in
an automobile accident. Her heart is donated to Grace, a desperately ill
young waitress. A year passes. Grace's life has improved dramatically.
Her extended family of Irish and Italian grandparents have been enormously
understanding and are now in the business of matchmaking for her. Bob's
life had gone downhill. In his grief, he has thrown himself into his work,
trying to bring his late wife's dream for a new gorilla habitat to life.
His social life is non-existent, his housekeeping has gone to hell, and
he is surly most of the time. One night, during mutually disastrous blind
dates, Bob and Grace meet. It's love at first sight. When things look
like they are about to become serious, Grace discover's whose heart beats
in her chest and it drives a wedge between them. Will true love conquer
all? You're joking, right? Of course it will.
Return To Me is alternately irresistably sweet and
insufferably cute. It is remarkably free of cynicism, which is refreshing,
but it lacks for hard edges, too, which hurts it. When it is detailing
the relationship between David Duchovny's Bob and Minnie Driver's Grace,
the film is dead on perfect. When it is focusing on the supporting cast,
things are hit or miss. The domestic scenes with Grace's friends (played
by the film's writer-director Bonnie Hunt and James Belushi) are accurately
observed and ring true enough that they could comprise a pretty good movie
on their own. The scenes with Grace's grandfather and his cronies ring
false and and are almost impossible to sit through. Fortunately, the chemistry
between the leads here is excellent and their scenes together are what
the audience is there for in the first place. One wishes there were more
of them, and fewer scenes with the supporting players. On the whole, it's
not a bad movie, but diabetics and hypoglycemics should avoid it at all
costs....
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