I left the theater after watching Return to Me with a smile on my face. This romantic comedy starring David Duchovny and Minnie Driver had managed to work its way into my heart with its captivating wit. As I drove home, I couldn’t help but think that the review I would soon write for the film would a glowingly positive one.
This attitude was a drastic change over the initial reaction I had in the first few minutes of the movie. As the story began I felt that the plot was a little too obvious, the direction too choppy, and the acting was definitely sub-par.
The story involves Minnie Driver as a young woman who in the beginning of the film is desperately in need of a heart transplant. These early scenes were cut and pasted together, jumping from place to place with no rhyme or reason. Scenes of Driver in the hospital quickly cut to David Duchovny and his wife at a charity function, raising funds to build a new addition to the zoo which Duchovny has designed to house the gorillas his wife works with.
Long before Duchovny’s wife dies, we’ve figured out that it’s going to happen. She has to; Driver and Duchovny are seen getting together in the commercials for the film. Besides, Minnie Driver needs a heart, and who would be a more likely donor? This amazing set of coincidences, which were easily predictable from the moment the film began, almost ruined the movie for me. David Duchovny’s mourning over his wife’s death, which seemed very forced and artificial, only brings the film further towards the brink. If I hadn’t been paid to be sitting there, I might have walked out of the theater.
But after the premise has been set up, and the characters are given room to breathe, the dialogue steps to the forefront. It becomes snappier, fresher, more piquant. In short the movie gains a sense of humor, and I realized there in the theater that I was looking at the movie all wrong. I had gone into the film with a modern mindset, expecting the type of raunchy, bawdy humor that we’re used to in today’s movies.
But this movie defies those conventions. It’s wholesome, if you can believe that. It seems odd to say it, but what else can you call a film in which the two romantic leads manage to keep their clothes on throughout the film? Don’t get me wrong; I’m as big a fan of South Park as anyone. But Return to Me was a welcome change of pace, a throwback to the movies of yesteryear in which true love seemed to mean just a little more.
Writer-director Bonnie Hunt, an extraordinarily amusing woman in her own right, has created a movie with Return to Me that easily reminds me of a Marx Brothers film. The comedy is the main focus of this film, and the emotional responses of the audience to the romance of Duchovny and Driver’s characters are carefully planned out. There is a very familiar felling to this movie, almost nostalgiac, which perhaps exaplined why most of the audience in the theater was comprised of older couples.
True, Bonnie Hunt is still a novice director, but she is clearly an experienced filmmaker. That distinction allows this movie to rise above its minor foibles, to join the ranks of classic romantic movies of recent years, such as Sleepless in Seattle or Jerry Maguire. A safe bet for any date, this movie would be worth your attention, especially as something to cuddle up with when it is later released on video.
