ROSEBUD
RETURN TO ME Directed by Bonnie Hunt Screenplay by Bonnie Hunt & Don Lake With David Duchovny, Minnie Driver (Theater) PG 116 min.
This is Bonnie Hunt's "Citizen Kane". The talented second banana comedienne wrote the story and the screenplay, starred, and directed. In case you think the Welles connection slipped by Bonnie, the first line uttered by her heroine is "Rosebud."
I've seen "Citizen Kane", Ms. Hunt, and "Return to Me" is no "Citizen Kane". On the other hand, it's a lot funnier and a lot more romantic than "Citizen Kane".
A good bit of the action takes place at O'Reilly's Italian Restaurant in Chicago, where Grace (Minnie Driver) works when she has the heart for it. She gets the heart for it when a zoologist (Joely Richardson) dies in a car crash and her ticker is transplanted into the expiring Grace.
The grieving widower (David Duchovny) shows up at O'Reilly's one night a year or so later, and it's love at first sight. Theirs is a sweet, totally PG romance - he's the jacket-sharing, hand-holding type, she's a winsome virgin whose dating career has been curtailed by her bad heart. She knows she should tell him about her heart transplant, but can't seem to work up the nerve. Then she discovers whose heart it is she has.
The premise is a tad unlikely, but Hunt and her company play it with such sweetness and good humor that it hardly matters. There's even a lovable dog and gorilla in case things aren't cute enough already. Duchovny files away Fox Muldur and learns to enjoy life. He and and Driver are appealing lovebirds, and when things threaten to falter Hunt steps in with her unfailing charm, and brings along James Belushi for some likable vulgarity. And if that's not enough, there's the gang in the back of O' Reilly's, an over-the-hill Irish-Italian Rat Pack led by Robert Loggia and the wonderful Carroll O'Connor as Grace's doting grandfather. This isn't an Oscar-breeding kind of movie, but worse performances than O'Connor's have grabbed the gold.
Hunt keeps the hankies popping out of the pocket pack with her hearts-and-flowers story, but she never lets herself wallow too long in sentiment before nudging things back onto the laugh track. She directs with the same pure timing she shows as an actress, and it makes for a lovely movie.
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