FORCES OF NATURE
A film review by Bradley Null
Copyright 1999 Bradley Null
filmcritic.com
Any time you go to see a romantic comedy with big budget stars and a promo tagline like, "He went from the eye of the storm into the arms of a hurricane," you have to be a little scared. After all, for every WHEN HARRY MET SALLY, there are a dozen WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING's, and the worst part is that the bad ones always seem to make more money.
Surprisingly, my fears about sitting through FORCES OF NATURE were unfounded and alleviated pretty quickly. FORCES OF NATURE is basically PLANES, TRAINS, AND AUTOMOBILES, except that John Candy has been replaced with Sandra Bullock, Steve Martin is now Ben Affleck on his way to get married, and instead of hating his travelling companion, Ben is falling in love with her. With a set-up like this, you have to be especially worried, because Hollywood thrives on taking totally unrealistic premises and turning them into trite, sentimental, and naive romantic comedies with unrealistic happy endings. The reason this romantic comedy is pulled off, despite such an unrealistic premise though, is that the plot is actually somewhat darker an more honest than that of you typical popcorn movie. Additionally, the more unrealistic moments are played for laughs and not tears.
Credit the director, relative newcomer Hughes, the writer, and the entire cast, particularly Steve Zahn as the best man, for keeping FORCES from careening into unabashed sentimentalism. It's the best Hollywood text-book romantic comedy I've seen in a while, but with that said, it is still a Hollywood text-book romantic comedy, so while you can expect a few laughs, and a sentimental moment or two, don't expect a life altering experience.
And one more thing, because I know that there are those of you out there that are already eager to send me hate-mail for saying WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING sucked or maybe you want to claim that FORCES OF NATURE is life-altering. Save your time. I personally don't mind the hate-mail, I think it is funny, but if you think you are going to make me change my mind or feel bad for insulting a masterpiece, you are not. What I write here are my opinions, and if you don't think they have any merit, don't read my reviews. I'm not doing this whole film review thing to feel self-important, I'm doing it as a service, so if you don't think what I write is worth reading, then PLEASE don't read it.
RATING: *** 1/2
|------------------------------|
\ ***** Perfection \
\ **** Good, memorable film \
\ *** Average, hits and misses \
\ ** Sub-par on many levels \
\ * Unquestionably awful \
|------------------------------|
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Director: Bronwyn Hughes Producer: Susan Arnold, Donna Arkoff Roth, Ian Bryce Writer: Marc Lawrence Starring: Ben Affleck, Sandra Bullock, Maura Tierney, and Steve Zahn
http://www.asylum.com/forcesofnature
-Christopher Null / null@sirius.com / Writer-Producer / http://www.filmcritic.com
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