Sometimes I like to review movies so I can tell you about a film I really liked and think you should see immediately. Other times, I like to review movies so I can tell you which films to stay far, far away from. This review is going to be one of the latter.
Winona Ryder stars as Charlotte Fielding, a twenty-two-year-old woman who designs hats for a living. When she meets her mother’s old friend Will Keane (Richard Gere) she’s attracted to him, but he’s forty-eight. That puts things in a slightly weird category. For Will, though, there is no weird category. He’s a playboy and all women are, to him, potential lovers. He likes Charlotte and calls her to order a hat, and then tells her that the woman he bought it for is no longer in the picture and he wants her to wear it to an event with him.
They quickly head into a whirlwind romance. He’s not very devoted to the relationship and cheats on her at a party while she’s in the other room. But when it’s revealed that she has a tumor in her heart, he suddenly will move heaven and earth to find the cure, and it doesn’t work, and she dies.
There are so, so many things about this film that troubled me. First, the sexual content was beyond what I felt was appropriate for a PG-13 movie. Granted, when you’re watching a PG-13, you’re expecting some content, but what transpires in the film was worthy of an R, in my opinion. I really disliked how casually he took their relationship until he found out she was dying – it would have been nice to know some measure of his feelings before then. As it was, it wasn’t real to me. He only wants her because he’s going to lose her. Additionally, I know that age differences can work – my husband is quite a bit older than myself, although not as old as Will – but the storyline of the film didn’t give them enough to build on. He thought she was different, she was swept off her feet. That’s all they had. There was no foundation at all. If she had lived, they probably wouldn’t have lasted as a couple for more than a year. There was simply no reason for them to be together.
Leave this one on the shelf next time you’re at the video store. I can point you to much better films, like these: