WAKING UP IN RENO
Reviewed by Harvey Karten Miramax Films Director: Jordan Brady Writer: Brent Briscoe, Mark Fauser Cast: Natasha Richardson, Patrick Swayze, Charlize Theron, Billy Bob Thornton
If you and your spouse wanted to go on vacation for a couple of weeks, say, a drive to Reno or Vegas, how would you want to go...just the two of you? Go with an escorted tour? Pick up your best buddies, the couple you hang out with regularly? Probably that last option would be ideal. How could you miss? You all get along, you have others to talk to and kid around with during the drive of several days (if you choose to go by land). But there's a danger in that. If two people become irritated with each other that one's thing. Cart your pals with you and your annoyances are an open book, and besides you can double your pain just easily as you double your pleasure. Roy (Patrick Swayze) and Candy (Charlize Theron) found that out when they hooked up with the favorite buddies Lonnie Earl (Billy Bob Thornton) and Darlene (Natasha Richardson), picking up a brand new SUV and heading from their home town outside Little Rock, Arkansas for Reno, the Greatest Little City in the World. They're armed with an AAA triptik, to which we in the audience are made privy as director Jordan Brady from time to time flashes a cute area map onto the screen and we follow the bouncing vehicle on its way out west.
What makes the journey fraught with extra peril is that Lonnie Earl is enjoying an affair with Roy's wife, Darlene; well actually just two tosses in the hay if we are to believe his confession later on. Why did Lonnie Earl find it necessary to take up with his best friend's wife? If we believe his side of the story--which we might depending on our interpretation of the four-way relationship-- Lonnie Earl's wife Darlene is not particularly the giving kind. She comes across as fairly cold, whining occasionally, and judging by the flamboyant way that Candy jumps into the motel pool followed by Darlene's tentative steps into the water, I'm inclined to support that view.
"Waking up in Reno," which is so named because in that city the four people are stirred out of their lethargy to reconsider their relationships with one another, is a slight affair so to speak, an inconsequential road-and-buddy romantic comedy which purports to show that you don't always need a marriage counselor to learn where change is necessary. Just lock yourslef up, in effect, with another couple for a week or so on what is billed as a carefree vacation and watch the sparks fly. One of the problems with Brent Briscoe's and Mark Fauser's story is its cop-out ending, a finale which not even a TV soap would stoop to use. The ubiquitous Charlize Theron (whom I saw on the screen just last night at a screening of "The Curse of the Jade Scorpion"), looks ravishing (as though one needs to say this) whie Patrick Swayze gets a role that's so underplayed he appears generic. Natasha Richardson spends too much time looking literally like a farmer in Reno with Levi's type overalls while Billy Bob Thornton has been known to appear in more challenging roles.
Rated R. Running time: 90 minutes. (C) 2001 by Harvey Karten, film_critic@compuserve.com
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