BEFORE: Clearing another one today - this one's been on my list, and my DVR, for at least tow years. But even before that, I avoided this film for about 30 years - there's a twist to the story, and once you know it, there's little point in watching the film, or so I was led to believe. And I personally found that twist to be stupid, so that's probably part of the reason why I avoided the film for three decades, then another two years. At this point I want to watch it just to get it out of the way.
Debra Monk carries over from "For Love or Money".
THE PLOT: A couple fall in love despite the woman's pessimistic outlook. As they struggle to come to terms with their relationship, something supernatural happens that tests it.
AFTER: Yeah, I still think this is pretty stupid, but at least now I never need to watch this again. You should stop reading now if you don't know the twist, or if you don't WANT to know the twist. Seriously, turn back now, because there's no way to talk about this movie without spoiling it, and then, like me, you may not want to watch the film once you know its secrets. OK, don't say I didn't warn you.
The big twist is that it's a "body-switching" comedy, two people swap bodies, or they swap souls, however you want to look at it - and honestly, I'd rather watch films like "Big" or "13 Going on 30" where characters age overnight than deal with this body-swap nonsense. I mean, it can't happen in real life, so why are there so many movies that use this as a plot point? There's "Freaky Friday", both versions, there's "Vice Versa", "Like Father, Like Son", and "The Change-Up" with Jason Bateman and Ryan Reynolds - none of these films are any good, right? They just can't be. Then there's a sub-class of films with the gender-switching, like "Goodbye Charlie" and "Switched" and "The Hot Chick". Which Hollywood executives thought these were good ideas, or a trend worth continuing?
"Prelude to a Kiss" is both, a body-switch and a gender-switch - hell, it's an old-young switch as well, they really went for it, with a young bride swapping bodies with a really old man. The "magic" takes place when they kiss on her wedding day, and here's the "secret sauce", the source of the magic, they both wanted it to happen. Obviously, the old dude wanted to feel young again, but then for the bride supposedly it was a passing fancy, like, "Oh, I wonder what it would be like to have your whole life behind you instead of ahead of you, to have everything worked out and to be secure in who you are." Umm, yeah, except no young people wish for this, because they're too busy being young and enjoying that. So this just didn't work for me.
The only thing that's moderately interesting is that the swap takes place at the wedding, so the bride doesn't get to go on her honeymoon, because she's in the wrong body. This leads the groom to believe that his wife is acting differently just because they got married - as if it was the wedding that suddenly made her have a more positive outlook on life and be cured of her persistent insomnia. But then there are intimate things she doesn't want to do any more, and that's a stereotype about people who get married, right? As soon as the honeymoon is over, the sex life dies down - well, for some people, anyway. But here it probably has more to do with the fact that the old dude in the young woman's body isn't into sex with men? OK, sure, but we're getting into a very weird set of plot points, then.
Also, you can imagine a new spouse saying, "Oh, she's a different person since we got married," but they don't usually mean that literally. Except for here, Peter convinces himself that his wife is suddenly a different person since they got married. Besides the sudden ability to sleep better, she doesn't seem to remember the recipes for any of the drinks she made at her bartending job, so there's that. Also, she starts pushing for them to go out for dinner at four o'clock and get to bed by eight, and she keeps asking for the senior discount at the movies, which is all a bit odd. Plus she starts listening to talk radio and voting Republican.
For some reason the young Rita in the old man's body never says, "Whoa, hey, how did I switch bodies?" or "Hey, everybody, something weird just happened..." allegedly because she didn't think anyone would believe her - but this just seems like a dodge, a screenwriting ploy just to keep the story going a bit longer. Instead she goes back to live with the old man's family and she waits to die, I guess. Well, at least she's being well-cared for - I guess this is the downside of being a pessimist and a fatalist, she won't take any steps to fix her problem, she just sits around and waits for Peter to figure out that somebody elses soul is in his wife's body. Couldn't she write him a letter or something to explain the situation?
I guess this was a play before it was made into a movie, but how exactly did THAT work? You can obviously do a lot more with effects in a movie than you can on the stage, so was the play even clunkier than this movie was? Supposedly the play was designed to be an oblique commentary on the AIDS crisis, but I don't really see the connection there. The movie instead reminds us that life is precious but finite, and no matter what we do, we're going to get old and die sooner than we'd like, and in the best case scenario, we'll also get to watch everyone we love die before we do. Yeah, thanks for that, "Prelude to a Kiss", but please stop helping me.
Today's "Love Tip", I guess, is to have some foreign phrases or other code words worked out with your life partner, ones that only you two would know, just in case you need to prove to them that somebody's swapped bodies with you, and instead of a petite young blonde you're now in the body of a large old man. I hope you never need to use that tip, though.
Also starring Alec Baldwin (last seen in "Dean Martin: King of Cool"), Meg Ryan (last seen in "Everything Is Copy"), Kathy Bates (last seen in "Bad Santa 2"), Ned Beatty (last seen in "The Killer Inside Me"), Patty Duke, Richard Riehle (last seen in "Pee-Wee's Big Holiday"), Stanley Tucci (last seen in "The Witches"), Sydney Walker, Rocky Carroll (last seen in "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks"), Ray Gill, Ward Ohrman, Annie Golden, Frank Carillo, Fern Persons, Rob Riley, Jane Alderman.
RATING: 4 out of 10 rolls of microfiche
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