BEFORE: I'm going back again to the early 1990's for this one, 1993, which was also the year that "For Love or Money" got released, and one year after "Prelude to a Kiss". These films are all still running somewhere, be it on cable channels or streaming services, so I guess these have stood the test of time, and they lasted long enough for me to record them, avoid them for a couple of Februarys and then finally feel satisfied (?) when I cross them off the list. And these actors (Meg Ryan, Alec Baldwin, Michael J. Fox, Matthew Broderick) were all kind of in their prime, most of them are still around, umm, except for the ones that aren't. When I see a big gap in somebody's career (Bitty Schram), I have to wonder if they quit acting or moved into producing or just got married and moved to Montana. Haven't seen Garry Shandling in anything in a while, either, I hope he's OK.
Jeanne Tripplehorn carries over from "Gloria Bell".
THE PLOT: Brian, Ellen and Sam timeshare an apartment on different days. A shift on Mondays/Wednesdays causes mistaken identity as Ellen and Sam have never met but leave notes and food behind for each other.
AFTER: Oh, man, this storyline is so clunky that it HURTS. It feels like the screenwriter/director just doesn't understand how most things in the world work, like apartments, for example. The writer needed to set up the mistaken identity thing, so he created a world in which people rent a beautiful apartment for just two nights a week. Is this a thing? Who does this in the real world? I guess I can see if somebody worked on Wall Street and lived in the suburbs, didn't want to commute every day, so maybe they would have a Manhattan apartment for the week and then go home to their family on the weekends, but this also seems very problematic, over time they could grow apart from their spouse and also be tempted to cheat. Commuting sucks, sure, but in the long run it's probably the best option.
Why would any landlord agree to this, setting up three people who live in an apartment for two nights each in a normal week - this is not normal, that means three sets of keys, lord knows how many houseguests, issues about cleaning and storage and personal space, a whole host of problems when it's probably SO much easier to rent one apartment to one person or one couple. THAT'S why the world works that way, and not as seen in a bedroom-farce screenplay.
The men don't come off well here - Brian is the guy with the rent-controlled apartment, and he's about to get married, and still wants to keep the apartment, thus he takes on two roommates who only get the space two nights each a week, and this gives him two nights with his buddies, where they can drink, play poker, watch the football, and apparently dance like nobody is watching (terribly, in other words). Yeah, that's what guys do, they keep an apartment just to drink and dance with each other. Wait, what? Sam takes the deal, paying 1/3 of the rent, which comes to $92 per month (per week?) just so he can have a nice place to cook meals for his dates - he gets Mondays and Saturdays, so Saturday can be date night, but bear in mind he's still paying FULL rent for a crappier apartment with like eight other roommates who don't respect his privacy or his personal space. How is it not easier and cheaper for him to just get a better apartment with, say, two better roommates? I guarantee I've already thought about this much more than the screenwriter did.
The mistaken identity comes about when Brian needs to change the schedule, and I guess Sam gets a Wednesday instead of Monday?? Wait, I thought he wanted date nights, back then Wednesday wasn't considered "the new Friday". But this leads to Sam leaving behind gourmet leftovers for Brian, only the next night, they're eaten by Ellen, who thinks they were left by Brian. Look, I can't devote any more brain space to this, supposedly Ellen didn't get the information about the swap, but as a plot point, I'm sure this doesn't work somehow. Sam had Mondays, and he knew that Ellen had Tuesdays, so why would he leave food for Brian, who's not going to there until Wednesday? OK, so I get that Ellen thinks Brian left her the food on Wednesday in advance of her Thursday stayover, but doesn't anybody sign a note with their name? That seems like common courtesy - but again, who cares how things work in the real world because we just HAVE to set up this whole mistaken identity thing.
Ellen is married, by the way, and clearly there's something wrong in her marriage if she also needs to rent an apartment for two nights a week, just to have a place to paint. But this is so clunky, too, she comes all the way in from Queens just to spend time away from her husband? Or does she have a job in Manhattan and she needs a place to crash? Queens isn't that far away, but her husband wants to buy a house on Long Island, like Exit 52, and that actually IS a fair distance from the city. So it would have made more sense if she already lived out there and didn't want to make the trip home a few nights each week, that way she'd be in Manhattan already, first thing in the morning. By the way, what is Ellen's job? She's a dental hygienist, she works at the dry cleaners, she's an artist, which is it?
For that matter, is Sam a chef, an actor or a cheese salesman? I guess he's got aspirations to be a chef, but then what is really going on in his life? He works at the cheese counter at Dean & Deluca, which for some reason never saw fit to institute the same "Take a number" policy as every other market in the world, so instead twelve people have to hover around the counter, hoping that he'll choose them next? That's a terrible system, and like everything else in this movie, bears no resemblance to the way that things work in the real world. Also, NITPICK POINT: He's an expert on cheeses, but he doesn't realize that an omelet isn't vegetarian? To be fair, there was a lot less vegetarian and vegan awareness back in 1993, but still, he should know where eggs and milk come from.
So many loose threads here that don't connect with anything, like Sam's relationship with his ex, Pastel, who's some kind of performance artist. And she ends up dating some guy from Texas or something who's also crashing, but in Sam's apartment full of roommates. Completely awkward, sure, but do you know how many apartments there are in New York City? The chances against this happening are astronomically huge. Then there are the "nosy neighbors", seen again and again, but it's all a plant just to have somebody to give the wrong information to Brian's fiancée when she finally comes around to see what he's been up to. Then there's Shep, only who the hell is Shep, and who is "Shep's New Date", also listed in the credits? And Sam's friend/co-worker, who's also an actor or writer or something, but this is never really explained or fleshed-out either. I can't understand half the directions that this film is firing in, or begin to fathom the WHY of it all. Clunky, clunky, clunky.
BUT, we still have today's "Love Tip" to get to, and it's an easy one - if you're going to sleep with your roommate, make sure you sleep with the right one. Simple as that. I was asked a few years ago by my boss, who was animating an opening "couch gag" for "The Simpsons" in which the couch fell in love with the TV, what the title should be. I thought for a minute and said, "Roomance" - and he liked it. Later on, I did discover that the term already existed, a portmanteau term for a love affair between two roommates. Oh, well, I guess I wasn't as innovative in that moment as I thought I was.
The Dean & Deluca store seen in the film was located at 560 Broadway, which was their Soho "flagship" location - as the company started having financial troubles, more and more locations closed during the 2010's, probably due to the rising cost of NYC rent. Eventually that flagship store was the last location open, but it closed in October 2019, ending a 32-year run for the business. And just a few months before the pandemic, too, they auctioned off their equipment to raise money to pay off some food vendors before shutting down for good.
Also starring Matthew Broderick (last seen in "Addicted to Love"), Annabella Sciorra (last seen in "The Kitchen"), Kevin Anderson (last seen in "Rising Sun"), Justine Bateman, Michael Mantell (last seen in "Gun Shy"), Christine Baranski (last seen in "Miss Sloane"), Doris Roberts (last seen in "The Heartbreak Kid" (1972)), Dominic Chianese (last seen in "The Family"), Tim Guinee (last seen in "Adrienne"), Louise Lasser (ditto), Bradley White, Greg Germann (last seen in "Miss Firecracker"), Dana Wheeler-Nicholson (last seen in "Tombstone"), Billy Campbell (last seen in "The Rocketeer"), Michelle Hurst (last seen in "The Trial of the Chicago 7"), Ranjit Chowdhry (last seen in "It Could Happen to You"), Richard Poe, Katharine Houghton (last seen in "Mr. North"), David Slavin, Brooke Smith (last seen in "Bombshell"), Bitty Schram (last seen in "Marvin's Room"), Billy Strong (last seen in "Just a Kiss"), Catherine Lloyd Burns (last seen in "Keeping the Faith"), Michael Mastro (last seen in "Tesla"), Jose Evelio Alveraz, Paul Guilfoyle (last seen in "Don't Look Up"), Davidson Thomson, Kathryn Rossetter, Mary B. McCann (last seen in "Phil Spector"), Steven Goldstein, Suzanne Lanza, Paul J.Q. Lee, Geoffrey Grider,
with cameos from Lewis Black (last seen in "The Last Laugh" (2019)), Naomi Campbell (last seen in "Always at the Carlyle"), Michael Imperioli (last heard in "The Many Saints of Newark"), Garry Shandling (last seen in "Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work")
RATING: 4 out of 10 sloppily-made sandwiches on poker night
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