ONE FINE DAY
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1996 Scott Renshaw
(20th Century Fox) Starring: Michelle Pfeiffer, George Clooney, Mae Whitman, Alex D. Linz. Screenplay: Terrel Seltzer and Ellen Simon. Producer: Lynda Obst. Director: Michael Hoffman. MPAA Rating: PG (profanity) Running Time: 107 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
Just in case you think the term "soccer mom" was nothing but a convenient demographic catch-phrase for the 1996 presidential election, ONE FINE DAY presents Michelle Pfeiffer as an in-the-flesh soccer mom, and her life is every bit as complicated as we have been led to believe. In between frying the bacon up in a pan and bringing it home, she has to deal with child care dilemmas, unsympathetic co-workers and sleep deprivation. It's one frantic day, all right, one that is equally frantic for "soccer dad" George Clooney, and it begins to turn ONE FINE DAY into a soci-political spin on PLANES, TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES. Unfortunately, this is supposed to be a romantic comedy, and the romance is dropped into this unfocused piece of work like an afterthought.
Pfeiffer plays Melanie Parker, a divorced architect with a 6-year-old son named Sammy (Alex D. Linz) and a very tight schedule ahead of her. She is also responsible for bringing Sammy's classmate Maggie Taylor (Mae Whitman) to school, and the schedule becomes even tighter when Maggie does not show up on time. That is because Maggie's mother has left her with ex-husband Jack Taylor (Clooney), a cocky investigative reporter with a somewhat cavalier attitude about parenting. When both kids miss the bus to a field trip, Jack and Melanie are stuck with their children though both have little time to spare. Out of sheer desperation, the pair end up helping each other out with the kids, despite an apparent antagonism. That antagonism begins to change into something else throughout the day, as Jack and Melanie are forced to re-consider their priorities.
If the idea of ONE FINE DAY is simply to show us how tough single parents have it, then I suppose it does its job. Both Jack and Melanie lose and re-find the children with some regularity, both are forced to make compromises and both find that working through their own relationship issues is the last thing they have time for. ONE FINE DAY is basically a string of crises of varying magnitude, and while a few are amusing, the cumulative effect inspires more anxiety than chuckles. Sammy is a particularly distressing case, a boy in desperate need of attention who drives his mother to tears with his inability to stay in one place and cause no damage. With inserts of clocks consistently reminding us of impending deadlines, ONE FINE DAY delivers the nerve-wracking realism of impossible demands without leavening it with enough humor.
It also delivers very little romance, and that's a shame, because Pfeiffer and Clooney click in the few moments they actually share the screen. There is a pat quality to the contemporary urban battle-of-the-sexes banter -- think WHEN HARRY MET SALLY AT THE DAY CARE CENTER -- but neither star cranks up the sniping to an aggravating livel. Clooney may not have the best comic timing (or hairdresser) in the world, but he has an affable charm as the irresponsible Jack, and Pfeiffer's attempts to maintain her dignity while wearing a dinosaur T-shirt to a business meeting are equally winning. In the film's final fifteen minutes, when Melanie and Jack finally get a chance to take a breath, there is a casual sexiness which finally seems in keeping with Natalie Merchant's torchy rendering of the Carole King/Gerry Goffin title song which opens the film. By the time you get there, however, you may be nearly as exhausted as Melanie and Jack.
Director Michael Hoffman (SOAPDISH, RESTORATION) has made some interesting films with a lot going on in them, but ONE FINE DAY is a case where he just wasn't able to tame the script (by Terrel Seltzer and Ellen Simon). Somewhere in there is an energetic little modern romance, but it gets buried under the side tracks of Melanie and Jack's respective occupational dilemmas, to the point where a press conference where Jack nails a corrupt politician is set up as the film's climax. You may be startled when you realize that there is still a lot of ONE FINE DAY left to go, time for it to deliver at last the relationship it teased you with in trailers, posters, and ninety minutes of running time. By that point it has become clear that, like its protagonists, ONE FINE DAY is too busy for something as mundane as a relationship when there are jobs to do, kids to watch and, yes, soccer games to attend.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 soccer moms: 5.
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