Love Amongst the Sleep Deprived

When it comes to love and laughter on the silver screen, I’ve always lumped Addicted to Love in with One Fine Day, two films released years after the Depression-era heyday of the screwball comedy. Both of these movies were deliberate homages to the screwballs of the past, which says a lot about the enduring popularity of the classic film genre. Although the golden age of screwball comedy was the 1930s and ’40s, the genre never really went away.In Addicted to Love, the dark, nocturnal streets of Greenwich Village provide a beautiful and slightly sinister backdrop to a dark tale of jilted lovers. Photographer Maggie (Meg Ryan) and astronomer Sam (Matthew Broderick) cross paths when they discover that their former flames are now living with each other. Sam hopes to win back the affections of childhood sweetheart Linda (Kelly Preston), but Maggie’s only intention is to see former lover Anton (Tcheky Karyo) “in pain, hopeless and finished off.“Billed as “a comedy about lost loves” you really have to dig beneath the surface of this film to find any layer of sweetness and silver linings. Cinematographer Maurizio Benazzo constantly surprises with his careful shot compositions, and director Griffin Dunne takes a romantic formula, turns it inside out, and adds a wild card in the character of Maggie. Meg Ryan fulfilling the classic 1930’s role of the sexy girl who spells big trouble for Broderick’s milquetoast.Meg trades in her usual sparkle, to play this abrasive, anti-romantic heroine and she cuts an indelible figure, resplendent in aviator goggles, feather boa and tie dye dress. Addicted To Love is all about Maggie and Ryan’s work here is inspired. Her clothes, makeup and hair are brought to a perfect pitch, but her ultimate embellishment is an unforgettable husky voice, pitched somewhere between a rasping ship’s foghorn and a bewitching siren’s song.
If you haven’t seen Addicted To Love may I suggest you take a look at it? At first glance it might resemble When Maggie Met Sam in Soho via Seattle, but it did bring some originality to what had become a very predictable genre. If you going to watch both of these films, make sure you see Addicted to Love first.

So, let’s not be too hard on One Fine Day. It’s only in comparison to Meg Ryan’s über-luscious Maggie, that Michelle Pfeiffer & Co. suffer by comparison. Michelle and Buff Bagwell wannabe George Clooney actually make for a fine-looking couple, as strangers who cross paths one rainy day, and fall into instant dislike. They spend the rest of the film denying their feelings, until in accordance with the bylaws of the Hollywood Cliché Code, love finally conquers all.Diametrically opposite Maggie and Sam in their “bohemian hell hole,” the bustling Upper East Side of New York is home to Melanie Parker (Pfeiffer) and Jack Taylor (Clooney), two working single parents who meet-cute when their children miss a school field trip.Jack is a conceited New York Daily News columnist, Melanie is a career-centred architect. They’re both late for work, have their bosses breathing down their necks, and are in dire need of somebody to take care of their children. So despite their mutual antagonism, they reluctantly agree to join forces.And so on. One Fine Day is a movie you’ll sing along with, because Michelle Pfeiffer and The Big Apple have never looked finer. From the Circle Line to Central Park to Radio City Music Hall, a wonderful lustre envelopes this film. Director Michael Hoffman revels in the city, and James Newton Howard’s score summons up the strains of the great musical poets of Manhattan’s past.Juxtaposed with the spell of Meg Ryan’s blonde voodoo, Michelle is positively pulchritudinous. Complete with dinosaur t-shirt and washed out hair, Pfeiffer is the definitive star of the film, as she effortlessly conjures up the breezy insouciance so necessary for a screwball comedy to succeed.The history of cinema is the history of boys photographing girls.” Or so Jean-Luc Godard has been quoted as saying. Watching the haughty, heavenly Melanie Parker and potent, pouting Maggie working their magic, it’s hard to disagree.

Trivia

Question:
What do Suzan Anbeh, Alec Baldwin, Kathy Bates, Ned Beatty, Matthew Broderick, Sean Connery, Robert Downey Jr, Charles Durning, Carrie Fisher, David Hyde Pierce, Kevin Kline, Nathan Lane, Robert Loggia, Gwyneth Paltrow, Sean Penn, Kelly Preston, Rob Reiner, Kiefer Sutherland, Jennifer Tilly, Mae Whitman and Robin Wright all have in common?Answer:
They’ve all appeared in a Pfeiffer film AND a Meg movie. Surprisingly, of that list only Alec Baldwin can boast of having been married to both Meg & Michelle’s characters. He played the scumbag husband of Pfeiffer’s Angela de Marco in Married to the Mob and later romanced Meg Ryan’s Rita in Prelude to a Kiss.