Directed by Bonnie Hunt, Rated M, GU George St and suburbs, Hoyts suburbs, selected Independents.
When an American movie begins by showing you a supremely happy couple, you have a right to be nervous. When you see that they have a beautiful apartment and a lovely big dog that won't leave the front door till his mistress gets home, you really start to worry. Too much happiness means she's doomed.
In her first movie as a director, Bonnie Hunt knows that we know. And by casting Joely Richardson as the wife, she leads us to expect the Hollywood comedy version of death, the kind that's not so fatal. You don't kill someone so pretty in the first reel unless she's going to come back as an angel, a ghost, a man, or some combination of all three. The surprise here is that only part of her comes back, when her heart is transplanted to a very sick woman, played by Minnie Driver.
As Richardson's heart rises, mine sank. Oh no, it's the old ``he-falls-in-love-with-the-woman-who's-carrying-his-dead-wife's-heart" plot. Given that the husband is played by David Duchovny, the X-Files man, couldn't he just zap over to the other side and bring her back?
This heart stuff looks like it will ruin the movie, but it doesn't. It just obscures things temporarily. Bonnie Hunt is best known as an actor; she was Renee Zellwegger's sister in Jerry Maguire, but her career started in Chicago in Second City, the famed comedy troupe.
She grew up in Chicago and this movie is set there. The plot may come from Hollywood but the heartbeat is Chicago, so to speak, and that's important. It gives the film the reality it badly needs. Hunt co-wrote the script with Don Lake (also ex-Second City) and it's a film about people she has known good, hard-working, funny, kind people, who are perhaps a little eccentric. They're waiters and cooks and construction workers and vets, Italians and Irish and blacks.
Real people aren't that common in movies, but Hunt makes sure we see each one as distinct; perhaps that's her actor's generosity, wanting each one to shine. Hunt also appears in a major role as Megan, best friend of Grace (Driver) and she brightens every scene she's in. Megan has five kids and a beer-drinking bear of a husband she adores (James Belushi in top comic form). She has deep roots and oodles of comical good sense, like when she tells Grace not to shave her legs before a big date, ``then you won't let it go too far".
The film is partly about dating. Bob (Duchovny) hasn't dated since he met Elizabeth (Richardson) at 15; Grace has been too sick to date since she was 14. A year or so after the transplant she's a picture of health and Bob's turned into slob of the decade.They meet at O'Reilly's Italian restaurant, run by her Irish grandpa (Carroll O'Connor doing an aging leprechaun performance, with Robert Loggia as the chef). She works as waitress and she's scared of men they all turn weird when they know she has someone else's heart.
Bob hears her heart beat as she walks past. This gooey side of the film left me dry but it's not the whole thing. Driver has so much charm she gets away with most things on screen and her timing is superb. It's also fun to see Duchovny being less anal than as the insufferable Fox Mulder.
