MRS. WINTERBOURNE (PG-13)
Reviewed by E. Benjamin Kelsey
* * (out of four)
I recall MRS. WINTERBOURNE being compared to WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING, though nowhere near as charming. That's the basics of the reviews I remember reading anyway. This is very true I suppose, but I don't know that I would have actually thought of the comparison without hearing it first.
The first half an hour or so of MRS. WINTERBOURNE is nauseating. Bad directing and even worse acting are what we experience. Canned dialogue that comes off sounding like the first rehearsal of a junior high play will make you want to stop the tape (since it's out of theaters a long time now) right then and there. But if you hold out, the film does actually manage to improve. That doesn't mean a whole lot, but if you can really REALLY get past how sappy and cheezy this movie is, then you might actually find it somewhat c ute.
Ricki Lake stars as Connie Doyle, a young girl who moves out to New York on her eighteenth birthday. With nowhere to go and nowhere to stay, she is quickly and easily befriended by Steve DeCunzo (played by Loren Dean, who is much better in this year's GATTACA), a con-men of women's hearts. Claiming to be a producer, he quickly wins her heart and lets her into his apartment. The relationship dissipates, and when Connie announces she's pregnant, Steve decides he wants no part of it and kicks her out onto the street.
Roaming the streets penniless, Connie ends up at the train station where she accidently winds up on a train to who knows where. Panic strikes when tickets are being collected and Connie naturally doesn't have one. She is saved by the carefree, playful Hugh Winterbourne (Bredan Fraser), who roleplays as her husband. Hugh takes Connie back to his bunker (?) and introduces her to his real wife, Patricia, who is also pregnant and the same amount along.
When Patricia notices Connie's longing admiration of her wedding ring, she insists that Connie try it on. Cue train wreck. Next thing we know, Connie is coming to conciousness in a New England hospital as the memory of the train wreck hits her. But her attention soon focuses on the fact that she's no longer pregnant. In a panic, she calls for the nurse and "her" baby is brought to her, safe and sound. One problem - the name tag reads "Baby Boy Winterbourne". Sure enough, Patricia's wedding ring is still on her finger and she has been confused as Patricia, who was killed, along with Hugh, in the crash.
As luck would have it, Hugh's family never did meet Patricia, and this makes it easy when, to Connie's nervous dismay, she is taken into the Winterbourne home. There Connie finds a loving acceptance like she never knew and finds it harder and harder to divulge her true identity, especially when she starts falling for Hugh's twin brother Bill.
It's a good thing that when someone dies in the movies, they don't have to worry about blood tests or fingerprints or whatever you normally think might be looked at to determine who it is that's dead and buried in a train wreck. Why, a simple ring engraved with someone else's name will allow you to keep on living as that person!
Shirley McLaine is sadly waisted in this film as Grace Winterbourne, Hugh and Bill's mother. She is the only one who gives a solid, straight thru perfomance. Miguel Sandoval is a delight as the Winterbourne servant Paco. There is enough in this film to make it watchable, but it's a real shame it didn't do more with itself.
For all intents and purposes, my 21 year old sister LOVED the movie. Of course she's not one to care about the acting or directing as much, and I suppose that makes her a little bit more like the typical movie-goer. However, this film still sucks when looked at as an attempt at motion picture art, but has just enough sugar coated charm to garner two stars out of me.
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