Kind of a hidden gem? A little rough around the edges, mainly because the comedic timing always feels slightly off, as if they filmed it with too much space between the lines so that the dialogue/dubbing could be as clean as possible, but man, there's a lot to like here.
Right off the bat you get an absolutely fantastic theme song composed by Bobby Darrin, genuinely one of my new favorite movie tunes. Rock Hudson is portraying the most irresistible…
For some reason I was expecting this to be distinctly 90s in its comedic stylings, owing to the influence it had, but it very much feels like an 80s dramedy still. And honestly not the funniest one (nor is the drama all that great). That's what surprised me the most, it's so slight. When she goes back to the shop where she was looked down on? I remembered it being an iconic scene, but the payoff is barely there, just…
I respect how uncompromising it is as an anti-capital punishment movie: the man set to be executed is not, it turns out, a particularly good person. Yes, it would've been easy to write in a secret redeeming quality for Poncelet (Sean Penn), to make his sentencing blatantly unjust in some way, to make his crimes lighter. This isn't meant to be that kind of story, though, it's not about how some people don't deserve the death penalty, it's about how…
It's your average big name comedy from 2000 I guess. Has a flair of "empowerment" while being massively sexist, tries a little too hard to be funny, but, credit where it's due, the movie does get better as it goes along. By the time we're in that final setpiece I was having fun with it.
Still, kinda hated about 80% of this. The central conceit (i.e. Sandra Bullock's character is HORRIBLE and DISGUSTING) is too stupid, if there was ever…
