Director: Jonathan Demme
Cast: Goldie Hawn, Kurt Russell, Christine Lahti, Ed Harris
Have I Seen it Before: Never. To wit, before this last Friday, I had never even heard of the film. But there sure is something about checking into a hotel late, turning on the TV, working through whatever motion blurring difficulties you might be subjected to, hoping that the cable package includes TCM, and just going with whatever might be on.
It’s a unique way to take in a movie. There aren’t a lot of reasons to miss cable, but TCM is one of them. Aside from re-watching Romancing the Stone (1984), I didn’t get to watch nearly enough random movies from cable this vacation.
Did I Like It: There’s a thinness to the whole affair that I can’t quite get over, that’s only exacerbated after I read that the film was largely taken away from Demme in favor of Hawn, who put more focus on the relationship between her and Russell, even though neither of them are asked by any version of this film to do anything that made them objectively stars, and subjectively undeniably watchable.
What we’re left with is a distressingly tepid World War II homefront drama. Lora mentioned as she was half-falling asleep that there is almost nothing—even up to the structure of the screenplay itself—that wasn’t done during A League of Their Own (1992), and it’s hard to argue that. I’m tempted to give this film a degree of credit for getting there eight years ahead of League, but that movie obviously has more of a hook than what we’re given here, a far deeper roster of a supporting cast, and two leads in Tom Hanks and Geena Davis who are far better cast here than Hawn or Russell are in this.
I’m still glad I got to watch it, though, even if it was by accident.