ONE FINE DAY
A film review by Andrew Hicks
Copyright 1997 Andrew Hicks / Fatboy Productions
(1996) **1/2 (out of four)
There are movies that are sweet and there are movies that go way beyond sweet to the point of saccharine. And saccharine causes cancer in some people. So be aware that because I had a mostly positive viewing experience with ONE FINE DAY doesn't mean you'll be able to tolerate its sickening sucrose. I have a higher level of sugar tolerance than most even though my family has a history of diabetes.
ONE FINE DAY covers a day and night in the life of two struggling, divorced parents, played by George Clooney and Michelle Pfeiffer. Clooney is an immature newspaper columnist who wakes up one morning to find he's got custody of his six-year-old daughter for the week. He's the type that feeds his kid Tic-Tacs and Smores and routinely forgets to do certain key things. One of the key things he's supposed to do on this fine day is call Pfeiffer and tell her his daughter doesn't need a ride to school after all. And of course he forgets.
That means Pfeiffer and her six-year-old son, in the same class as Clooney's daughter, end up late for school and miss the big field trip. They show up at the same time Clooney does, and the sparks fly, in that cute, flirtatious movie way. Clooney and Pfeiffer share a cab back into the city, complaining about each other into their respective cell phones, and begin their hectic workdays with children en tow. Rest assured their paths will cross many a time until eventually they realize they're madly in love with each other.
Yes, there is a plot in there somewhere. Pfeiffer has to show a presentation to some clients at 2:00 and must race across town to fix the scale model her kid was responsible for breaking, and Clooney has to track down an interview before 5:00. And somehow they switched cell phones by mistake. Little contrivances like these add up for Clooney and Pfeiffer and they have to humble their stubborn pride and admit they need each other's help.
This movie would be excrutiating if not for a few details, like the fact that the script actually does contain a lot of laughs, minor and big, and that Clooney and Pfeiffer do have a weird kind of chemistry. The concept of George Clooney as a romantic lead wouldn't have occurred to me in a thousand years -- it's about as ridiculous as having him play Batman -- but he doesn't do a bad job at it. Now if he'd only get rid of that damn haircut...
Michelle Pfeiffer was well-cast as the harrowed control freak who tries to juggle all those balls on her own, and the two kids are personifications of the word "cute." It does go on for way too long, but ONE FINE DAY makes for a good date movie (not that _I'd_ know about such things) and a not-half-bad teenybopper chick flick. I don't fall into either of those categories, at least not on a surface level, but still found the movie pleasantly entertaining.
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