She's The One [DVD] [1997]

Mickey Fitzpatrick is the elder of the brother but he’s become something of an underachiever and a drifter. He’s currently working as a taxi driver, a job that doesn’t impress he father and certainly doesn’t impress his younger brother Francis who is something a young whiz kid hot-shot on Wall Street.

One day Mickey picks up a fare, a young beautiful girl, who’s going to JFK and in an unlikely but wholly enjoyable turn of events ends up driving the fare New Orleans and then marrying her only days after meeting. This doesn’t impress Frances one bit and he accuses Mickey of being irresponsible. Frances’ problem with Mickey’s new found love might have something to do with the fact that he is currently going through a marriage crisis with his wife, Renee, and is currently cheating on her with a beautiful girl of dubious morals called Heather.

To further complicate matters Heather is actually an ex of Mickey’s and is someone he still holds something of a candle for. As Mickey finds that living with his new love in a pokey flat and being constantly broke isn’t so much fun as it once seemed, and Frances has to decide between the two women in his life the two brothers will need to sort their own issues out and the issues that exist between themselves. Can the blunt advice dished out periodically by their father provide any sort of solution, or is he having relationship problems of his own.

This is a completely dialogue orientated film and in the main the interaction between the characters works very well. The three surprise endings work very well and for me at least they were completely disguised. The performances are solid and the cast does contain some big names. Probably star performer is Cameron Diaz who simply out-acts her contemporaries.

The only area where I felt there was room for improvement was in the characterisation of the two brothers. Although the film goes to great length to point out their differences, at the end of the day they are exactly the same. They are both selfish, arrogant (ok, one more than the other) unable to accept any sort of responsibility, unable to move on in their lives etc etc. There was more than one point in the film where listening to one or other of them moaning and moaning about “how my wife doesn’t understand me” was tiresome.

Luckily there are some delightful scenes that more than makes up for this. The sequence of snippets when Francis must explain his heterosexuality is particularly enjoyable.