MR. WONDERFUL
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1993 Scott Renshaw
Starring: Matt Dillon, Annabella Sciorra, Mary-Louise Parker, William Hurt. Screenplay: Amy Schor & Vicki Polon. Director: Anthony Minghella.
Sometimes, it's all about state of mind. Either you're ready to enjoy a certain kind of movie, or you're not. I can envision a different set of circumstances under which I might have walked away from MR. WONDERFUL with eyes rolling and a groan of "Puh-leez." But I didn't. Instead, I found it to be a warm and charming lightweight romance, full of appealing performances and well-directed moments of tiny heartbreak.
MR. WONDERFUL is the story of divorced couple New York couple Gus and Lee DiMarco. Gus (Matt Dillon) is a nice-but-simple Con Edison worker; Lee (Annabella Sciorra) has left him in an attempt to break free of "the neighborhood" and get a college education. Gus has since hooked up with Rita (Mary-Louise Parker), a nurse who wants to move in with Gus, while Lee is seeing Tom (William Hurt), her married English professor. Gus wants to go in with his buddies on reopening a local bowling alley, but can't afford it thanks to the cost of his alimony payments. The buddies suggest that Gus try to find Lee a husband so that he can be freed of his financial obligations. A reluctant Gus than sets Lee up with a series of acquaintances, all the while wondering whether or not he might really be her Mr. Wonderful.
Nothing about that premise screams originality. Feuding exes who still carry a torch have been fodder for most daytime and nighttime soaps for ever. The relative success of MR. WONDERFUL is attributable almost entirely to the cast. Dillon is an extremely likable lug; Sciorra has the tense charm of a woman just discovering herself. Their scenes together work to perfection because they manage to be thoroughly convincing as two people who have know each other, as Lee notes, "practically since I was born." They shift naturally between civil conversation and petty bickering, creating a genuine sense of history between them, and it's extremely entertaining to watch. Particularly affecting is a scene where Gus and Lee prepare to go out to dinner by lowering the roof on Gus's convertible, performing a multi-step ritual without thinking until Lee bigins to cry with the memory of better times. It was the frequency of moments like that one which ultimately won me over to caring about these characters. Equally delightful is Mary-Louise Parker, who gives her underdeveloped role as Gus's nervous girlfriend a beautiful soul. Parker has one of the most expressive mouths in films, and she uses it to show more different shades of emotion than she has lines. I also enjoyed David Barry Gray, who has an endearing puppy-dog energy about him as Gus's best friend Pope.
This is not to say that all of the characters worked all the time. I was quickly distracted by William Hurt's twitchy professor, who doesn't seem to have an identifiable personality. Vincent D'Onofrio only gets three scenes to develop what ends up being a rather important character, and consequently seems to try a bit too hard to make Dominic angelic. And yes, Dillon does have some overplayed moments, making Gus's "hidden emotions" far too obvious for anyone with half a brain, or even a notochord. Compare his reactions to Parker's at a hospital fundraiser where Lee appears with another man, just as an example of what not to do.
Director Anthony Minghella, who gave us the low-key supernatural romance TRULY, MADLY, DEEPLY, seems to have a knack for finding slices of real emotion without resorting to schmaltz. I was genuinely touched by a small moment involving a woman waiting for a blind date from a personals ad, as well as a brief conversation between Rita and Lee. However, these same moments also made me wonder whether MR. WONDERFUL had missed an opportunity to be a more wide-ranging examination of everyone's search for a Mr. or Mr. Wonderful, and what people are willing to do or give up for that chance. As it stands, the focus on the specific still held my attention. MR. WONDERFUL is no work of art, but it's gentle and affirming and it caught me on a good day. Kindly check in your cynicism at the door.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 blind dates: 6.
-- Scott Renshaw Stanford University Office of the General Counsel
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