Serious Moonlighting 020910

Meg Ryan plays Louise, a New York power woman who arrives at her country home in time to interrupt her husband, Ian (Timothy Hutton), writing the letter telling her he’s leaving her. He tells her he’s in love with Sara (Kristen Bell), and that they’re running away to Paris together. Louise gets mad (duh) and throws a potted planted at Ian that hits him just right and knocks him senseless. He awakens to find himself duct-taped to a chair and Louise tells him she won’t let him loose until he loves her again.

I actually enjoyed this movie. The whole thing works like a play really. Small cast, singular set and all of the humor comes from the situation and dialogue. After trying to escape under the ruse of having to use the bathroom, Ian wakes up duct-taped to a toilet. Ian insisting that after seeing this crazy side of Louise that he’s gone from lack of love to hate is pretty consistently funny. It was also refreshing to see one of the usually unexplored reasons that men leave their wives. Besides cowardice, selfishness, narcissism, and general lack of feeling. When Louise insists that Sara couldn’t possibly love him as much as she does, Ian responds with, “There’s more to it than that. She needs me. She genuinely needs me. You’re super woman. You haven’t needed me for years.” That’s a soapbox for elsewhere but it was nice to see.

The biggest negative is that halfway through, the movie switches genres on you. Ian attempts to get the attention of the lawn care guy (Justin Long) who decides to rob the house after seeing the situation. This turns into a hostage situation. The problem is, you have the ridiculous situation of wife duct-taping malfeasant husband to a toilet until he loves her again, and a guy shows up to rob the house and leaves them both in the bathroom, duct-taped. This is a really funny situation but it’s done like a deleted scene from Ransom. The funny is tossed aside for drama. When Sara arrives and is consequently duct taped in the bathroom (again, really funny situation), a few more laughs occur but they’re like the jokes thrown in to ease thriller tension. The acting is all superb (I really like Kristen Bell and Justin Long) and writing is good but it seems to have been written and directed by two different sets of people.

All in all, a C+. It’s a fun, quirky movie that you can pick up for a date night (it’s rated R solely for language) but I doubt it’ll become anyone’s favorite anything.