IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU. Directed by Andrew Bergman; written by Jane Anderson; produced by Mike Lobell for TriStar. Starring Nicolas Cage, Bridget Fonda and Rosie Perez. Rated PG.
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It Could Happen to You is a sweet little urban fairy tale with appealing romantic leads and a nice, but (very) leisurely pace.
The fairy tale angle is obvious from the basic story. Charlie (Cage) is a cop in Queens who wins $4 million in the lottery (the modern equivalent of the goose with the golden egg, for sure). But the day before, when he didn't have change for a tip at a coffee shop, he promised the waitress, Yvonne, (Fonda) that if he won anything, he'd split it with her. In true white knight fashion, Charlie keeps his promise, much to the chagrin of his greedy (but very funny) wife Muriel (Perez).
Everything about this movie, though, has a fairy tale quality. Charlie is the perfect cop; the tough-looking kids he plays stickball with in the neighborhood have hearts of gold; Yvonne is always sweet, compassionate and trusting, even if it means customers sometimes skip out without paying. New York even looks cleaner and brighter than I'm sure it really does—no mean streets here.
All this gives It Could Happen to You an old-fashioned kind of feel. Especially when Charlie and Yvonne start to fall in love, and do it in a very chaste and gradual fashion. Now I'm certainly a fan of the old, romantic movies that this one strongly resembles. But not everyone is. So be warned!
The only thing really wrong with It Could Happen to You is that it moves really slowly. Perhaps that's inevitable, given that the plot is short on action points and long on mood. But, all the same, movies that seem 30 minutes longer than they are, generally, could use some pepping up.
Cage and Fonda make a wonderful couple; not only attractive to us and believably attracted to each other, but such good-hearted, decent kids, too. You leave the theater hoping that there really are people like that around somewhere.
You know, however, that there are plenty of Muriels everywhere. Perez' incredible voice and pushy manner are hard to take at times. And you can either marvel at or be disgusted by Charlie's patience with her obnoxious behavior. But she is undeniably a treat to watch. As is the whole movie. If you're in an old-fashioned, romantic and unhurried mood.
August 31, 1994