Laine Andrews

Period piece about an eternal dilemma - marrying one woman out of duty because the gears were in motion and she's perfectly pleasant, then developing feelings for an unattainable other. Nuland Archer, a wealthy pillar of society is tempted to break the rules and take up with the scandalous divorcée he fancies whom he imagines to be much more exciting than his less intellectual wife. However, he is defeated by the rules of society that he has internalized, his wife who epitomizes those rules and his potential lover's basic decency, unwilling to break up a marriage. Frankly, there was no guarantee of sustained happiness in the alternate "road not taken" where Nuland ran off to Europe with a woman he barely knew, whom he imbued with romantic perfection compared to his conventional wife. Passion may have faltered if he found his idealized "Dulcinea" to be as boring as his wife over interminable meals together. As it is, he obviously made the best of his marriage bed, resulting in three children with whom he had a loving relationship. After his wife's death he realized she had been more astute about his longings for another than he guessed (and wished to restore him to his lost romance by confiding in their son). Too bad Nuland underestimated her insight into him and spent his life pining for an ideal that may not have been all tha, overlooking the possible gem in front of him. A frivolous observation - Michelle Pfeffier's frizzy hairdo may have been authentic to the time but unflattering and unsexy. Winona Ryder and even minor female characters had more elegant coiffeurs.

It seems strange that there are many East Indian and/or Hindi commenters who despise this movie as unrepresentative (with one star reviews) when the director and most of the cast are of that ethnicity and gladly participated - surely they must be representative of some fraction of the East Indian community too? Are there conservative vs more liberal factions with different opinions about what is acceptable in portraying Indian customs to outsiders? As an outsider, I did not detect any attempt to denigrate the culture and have attended an Indian wedding that was very similar to the one portrayed, so what gives?

The main character Becker as a Harvard-trained doctor who ends up running a modest general practice in the Bronx can be amusing as a miserly curmudgeon but sometimes he behaves truly despicably and the heart of gold moments (mostly with patients) don't quite make up for it. He's permanently in Bah Humbug Scrooge mode. Also he smokes like a chimney, a poor fit with his calling and supposedly high intelligence. It's actually irritating the dozens of times he lights up. The ensemble is the usual quirky perky mix. The black blind best friend with a down-scale job selling candy and magazines is unusual casting, difficult to make interesting so they wrote him as a stud with a series of beautiful girlfriends, rather unbelievable as hot chicks don't often go for blind and poor. He has a counterpart Bob. a sleazy scammer and loser including with the ladies who talks in the 3rd person. The office ditz is over the top flaky but well acted and entertaining playing off her straight woman, the efficient nurse running the office, sort of a wacky Jerry Lewis with bemused Dean Martin vibe. It's hard to see what Becker's 2 love interests on the show see in him, it would be impossible to live with someone so cantankerous about every little thing and cheap to boot. While under the influence of a tranquilizer he confesses that he's not great in bed, "all right but not great" so a trifecta of turnoffs - what a catch!...NOT.

The "bad boy" in this movie was actually the rich Harry Potter looking nerd who did such awful things to ruin his lifelong friend's crush on another boy that they should have made him toxic to her. She on the other hand was so stupid as to take obviously bad advice from the faux "Love Doctor" avatar that her so-called "friend" created. Meanwhile, the jock in the leather jacket with the motorcycle was a Grade A student and athlete and a very decent guy despite a sad childhood. The scene with the dress caught and ripped up to the heroine's crotch in the bicycle gears is ludicrous. Who wears shorts under a prom dress? And the second dress couldn't have been made out of the first even by Christian Dior come back to life. Guess the happy ending is meant to be the two friends, the mean boy of no integrity and dumb brunette discovering they love each other. The only happy ending I can see is that the very nice Billy Walsh escaped this lunatic duo.

Both British and American versions of "Ghosts" are worth watching. Indeed, comparing and contrasting the two approaches adds to the enjoyment. There is some overlap in the ghost characters but others are unique to their history on either side of the Atlantic. There are poignant moments interspersed among the chuckles, deriving from the differences in cultural mores in different epochs and also from the human dilemma confronting death in all its forms. The minority of commenters who complain about not enough wokeness incorporated should stop demanding that every show be the equivalent of a Public Service Announcement like bitter medicine. There are enough tedious shows like that banging the audience over the head with heavy handed didactic messages. This is a piece of light entertainment that eschews politics, a much needed distraction and relief from distressing goings on in real life and lack of talented leaders in the West to deal with rising totalitarian threats. We may be on a sinking ship but may as well have some witty amusement as we go down.

The title should be Bad Parenting Ruins Children. The parents are unbelievably childish themselves and do no disciplining of their bratty kids, especially the tantrum-prone daughter. Then when they're already not coping with two kids, they inflict these poisonous sibs on a new baby...

I watch very few movies over again but this one keeps me in front of the TV screen every time it comes on. Ms. Bullock and Mr. Reynolds nail their parts, making their whirlwind romance from hate to love totally believable and their supporting cast is note perfect including the nicest ex-girlfriend you've ever seen. The Alaska setting is so refreshing