warning: possible spoilers

This is the story of a couple (played by Susan Sarandon and Don Johnson), high school sweethearts who made the mistake of getting married and having kids. Now, 20 years later, they are separated and hate each other. Their brief interactions end in one's (usually Johnson's character's) rude, insensitive, or indifferent comment, followed by the other running away. After a couple of these interactions, I thought "now's the time when they sit down and try to work things out", since they clearly still "loved" each other (as all couples who fight constantly in the movies really "love" each other) and were in some kind of emotional pain. But this never happened. So, the movie's "plot" is the constant fighting.

Presumably in some attempt to revitalize their relationship (I think the writer at least had the insight to realize he was boring the audience, so he gives us some fresh scenery to make up for the stale "plot"), Sarandon's character decides she want to go to the Caribbean with her hubby. She overhears him commenting on a sunbather's "hooters" (the best he's ever seen). Of course, not one for talking, she instead tries to sleep with her hubby's best friend.

Like a good chap, he refuses, but as they lie in bed, hubby (of course) walks in and throws some furniture out of the sliding door. (Still no discussion.) But at least the best friend has enough emotional intelligence to suggest they "sleep it off"; they will feel better in the morning.

The next evening, after hubby gives a brief "speech" (mostly rambling, but ends by saying he wants things better, meaning his marital relationship). that night in their motel room, wife asks hubby if he wants to see her naked. Of course, he does. He tells her she's beautiful; she asks "but not the best you've ever seen?" and gets mad when he doesn't appease her. They yell. And, FINALLY, in their yelling, he asks her what she wants. "I want us to love each other!!" "Well, that's just great because so do I!!". And they sleep together. After all that time, all they really needed was to yell a few nice words at each other. Ah, movie romance! In the last scene I could bear to watch, they seemed to have reverted back to childhood. They stole hubby's best friend's car (it's fire-engine red!!) and were attempting to put it to sea when hubby asked wifie if she'd go to the dance with him. This is when I turned it off, seeing no hope that it could re-direct itself and still make any sense at all.

So, the moral of the story? Don't grow up. That only leads to complicated relationships and talking and all that nasty stuff. Sex might technically be for "grown-ups", but at least it's fun and you don't even have to talk afterwards! Maybe the writer was more clever than I gave him/her credit for, and the movie was really a satire on immature high school-sweetheart marriages. One can only hope.

This picture gets out of the gate well, but has a lot of difficult sustaining itself on a one-dimensional plot-line. In the first scenes, Jeff Daniels and Don Johnson establish a rapport as two best buddies who get involved in Halloween hijinks in their small Vermont town. Instead of continuing on a course which involves more of their shenanigins, it becomes obvious that this is a movie of family strife and man-woman relationships (as well as best buddy relationships). That is not so bad, but the movie is so unrelenting in it's pursuance of these themes, that it soon bogs down until you can no longer care what happens next in the Don Johnson-Susan Sarandon, and Jeff Daniels-Elizabeth Perkins relationships: you just wish they would get involved in something else. The same mood continues right to the end - I was certain that some catastrophe would create a climactic ending that would bring the two rocky relationships to a happy ending, but it wasn't to be. For this is one of those slice-of-life movies which tries to mirror everyday life, and in everyday life there are few catastrophies, only the unrelenting march of life. To the movie's credit though, this slice-of-life approach is not all bad, there is always something very comforting in a movie which successfully captures this mood. It, and other movies of it's ilk, make the statement: "This Is How It Is In America, No More And No Less!". Also to lt's credit is the strong cast. Susan Sarandon is, as usual, in fine form, and Don Johnson, as her somewhat unstable mate, captures the essence of the beleagured American husband. Jeff Daniels is good as the stabilizing influence to both of them, although this is about all he does. Elizabeth Perkins is not up to the calibre of the other three, though, and her character becomes the most tiresome of them all. Justin Henry, is a little bland as the teenage son tortured by the strife between his parents.

Episodes in the lives of two East Coast couples who are friends: Jeff Daniels and Elizabeth Perkins are the sweethearts (sweet hearts?) just getting their romance started, while Don Johnson and Susan Sarandon are married-and-bickering with kids. Tolerable comedy-drama from screenwriter Ernest Thompson of "On Golden Pond" fame isn't as maudlin (or, at least to my taste, as fraudulent) as that other film, though neither is it particularly witty or otherwise distinguished. Someone (either director Robert Greenwald, or Thompson, or perhaps the editor) chose to make each incident into its own chapter, like pages from a marital scrapbook or a photogenic kisses-and-hisses calendar. The picture comes off slight as a result, lacking in both romance and frivolity. Solid acting saves much of it, particularly by Don Johnson, whose bursts of temperament are convincing. Cinematographer Tak Fujimoto gives the movie a warm 'neighborly' feel that belies some of the emotions being played out. ** from ****