This is a movie for anyone who ever dreamed of adventure, anyone who ever dreamed of getting more out of life, or anyone who enjoys watching JoBeth Williams.

Cathy Palmer (JoBeth Williams) is about as bored as a housewife can be. Her husband, Kevin (James Staley), is a successful executive who cares more about his job than he does about her. She treasures a secret desire to write detective novels like the ones she enjoys about Rebecca Ryan. Kevin treats her desire with amused condescension and insists that his needs come ahead of her desires. Fortunately, her sons, Kevin, Jr. (Christopher Daniel Barnes) and Karl (Huckleberry Fox), are more sympathetic and help her try to run things the way Kevin Sr. wants them. This unhappy balance changes when Cathy enters a contest to come up with a short story based on the Rebecca Ryan character. To her delight, she wins. To her even greater delight, first prize is a trip to Paris. Delight turns to horror when Kevin insists that she turn down the prize, as it would be unseemly for an executive's wife to go off without him for any extended period of time. Cathy, however, has other ideas, and with her sons' help, she heads off for Paris. Once there, she gets into an accident which renders her unconscious. When she comes to, she thinks she is Rebecca Ryan, and starts behaving as though she were the literary detective. Strangely enough, this leads into an actual case, and along the way she meets French minister Victor Marchand (Giancarlo Giannini), and author Alan McCann (Tom Conti), who actually authors the Rebecca Ryan books under a pseudonym. All is going surprisingly well when Kevin shows up, identifying her as Cathy Palmer, and demanding that she come home. Will she? Or will she stay in Paris and solve the case she has gotten herself into?

This movie is a heck of a lot of fun. The pacing is fast, and even when it slows down a bit, it never loses the viewer. The juxtaposition of fantasy and reality works especially well in that you find yourself buying into the fantasy, even though you know it's not real. And there are plenty of surprises waiting for the viewer.

The acting is delightful. JoBeth Williams displays an absolute genius for comic acting. Her timing is impeccable. Tom Conti makes a delightful, if a bit unorthodox, leading man. Giancarlo Giannini's suave demeanor works perfectly in his part. Likewise, James Staley's stiffness is perfect for the boring husband. Both Christopher Daniel Barnes and Huckleberry Fox do a nice job of creating boys that you can't help liking. Their loyalty to their mother is touching.

All in all, a really fun package, well worth investing the time in.

For a 1984 movie, this is still a very engaging light comedy. Jo Beth Williams' charm carries the film. Tom Conti plays a role similar to, and even more appealing than, the character he would later in Shirley Valentine (he has much more screen time here). Coral Browne (Vera Charles in "Auntie Mame," heavenly voice in "Xanadu") is good her her brief scenes. Also, see if you can recognize the boy who plays her older son.

Please do not cheat yourself by over-analyzing the plot of this movie. It is a fantasy and should be viewed as such. There are so many great comic scenes, that to me it didn't matter what they had to do to set them up. Just go with it. In fact, I think the preposterousness makes it work even more. This film deserves rediscovery, or hell, just plain discovery!

There are a ton of plot holes in this amusing comedy that is extremely watchable in spite of all that. It is obvious that JoBeth Williams is having a ton of fun and she shares it with the audience, having up until then played either generic mother roles ("Poltergeist") or supporting roles (a scene stealing bit in "Kramer Vs. Kramer"), and this is by far her greatest part, one that should have gotten her at least a Golden Globe nomination.

She plays your ordinary frazzled housewife who lives her fantasy life wanting to be a writer of romantic adventures in spite of catering to the whims of her husband and two sons. She quickly establishes her comic talent in a very funny slapstick scene where every little kitchen gadget or piece of food becomes a prop in a wonderful pratfall. I had to rewind to watch that scene several times over and over.

But that is not how she ends up with amnesia. By chance, she wins a trip to France as part of a book writing contest and is hit by Giancarlo Gianinni's car, waking up to think that she is her favorite fictional romantic heroine, Rebecca Ryan. Through the generosity of Gianinni (or perhaps his fear of being sued), she ends up with a fabulous wardrobe and thinks that she lives in the opulent townhouse of the handsome Tom Conti who can't convince her otherwise.

This leads Williams and Conti on a series of wild adventures where she gets to live out her fantasy, attempting to prevent an assassination and ending up on a train which is identical to her dream from the opening scene. The fabulous Coral Browne as Conti's mother plays a variation of her Vera Charles role from "Auntie Mame" and is absolutely delightful.

James Staley, a character actor from many TV shows (instantly recognizable to me as a college dean on "Golden Girls) is delightfully square as her dull husband. So if you can get past the implausabilities of the story, you will truly enjoy it, and praise the comic timing of Williams who takes the comic abilities of Myrna Loy, Katharine Hepburn and Carole Lombard and roles them all into one.