FORCES OF NATURE A film review by David N. Butterworth Copyright 1999 David N. Butterworth
*** (out of ****)
If you saw Ben Affleck and Sandra Bullock cavorting hysterically during a recent "Access Hollywood" interview, you have a fairly accurate picture of what they're like together in their latest film, a romantic comedy called "Forces of Nature."
Bullock is, of course, the sassier of the pair. In fact, her character Sarah (why didn't they just go ahead and call her Sandra?) has a personality of about a six on the Richter scale. All that Ben Holmes (Affleck) wants to do is to get to Savannah in one piece and marry the love of his life, Bridget. Well, at first. But everywhere he turns there's someone telling him that marriage is a mug's game.
Ben first bumps into Sarah at the airport. When their plane crashes, not very badly, on takeoff (a seagull gets sucked into one of the engines), they're forced to hitch a ride with a guy named Vic, since all of the rental cars are spoken for (oh, there's a hurricane kicking up a bit of a fuss off the east coast, canceling virtually every flight out of the city). Well, Vic doesn't exactly work out and before you know it Ben and Sarah are hopping on a train. Not separately, but together.
The thankless role of Bridget goes to Maura Tierney (the wife in "Liar Liar"), who can't understand why it's taking her fiancé so long to get down there. While she's waiting, she's hit on by her old flame Steve, which doesn't seem to bother her father (Ronny Cox, the fourth canoeist that no-one remembers from "Deliverance"), since Steve is a successful lawyer and Ben simply writes copy for dust jackets. Bridget's Mom is played by Blythe Danner (real-life mother of Gwyneth Paltrow) with lots of hair and organization skills.
Scenes of the family dealing with escalating frustration give us a breather from the madcap adventures of Sarah and Ben, who are finally forced to pose as husband and wife. This so that they can snag a free bus ride, having used up virtually every other mode of transportation imaginable. It's at one of the tour's stopovers that Ben's best man (Steve Zahn, the stoner in "Out of Sight") and his girlfriend (Meredith Scott Lynn, the girl friend in "Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss") show up, throwing about the eighteenth monkey wrench into the works. Ben's a brain surgeon at this point.
Throughout all this, Ben and Sarah are thrust together constantly, and Ben finally cracks when Sarah storms out of their hotel bathroom, yelling up a storm in her lacy lilac undergear (which proves to be surprisingly unflattering--Ms. Bullock's agents take note).
Ironically, Sarah is probably Bullock's most annoying character yet she's at her least annoying playing her (that's always been my main problem with Bullock's earlier roles--cute but irritating). I think that's because Bullock really seems to be having fun with this part. If not, she's a remarkable actress. Affleck is a terrific foil to Bullock's high energy, and has many moments of his own, including a crowd-pleasing sequence in a bar. And I particularly liked his despairing line "I think I'll just sit here and wait for the locusts."
"Forces of Nature" is cute, cute, cute all the way. The ending is not at all pat, and makes exquisite use of the Sarah McLachlan song, "Fear." If Bullock and Affleck had any more chemistry, we might have witnessed spontaneous combustion onscreen.
-- David N. Butterworth dnb61@hotmail.com
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