Word: alibis
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Alibi...
...mission: to write an original movie screenplay that will utilize the acting talents of Tom Selleck and Paulina Porizkova. Correction: make that mission "impossible." The problem is not that Selleck and Porizkova cannot act, although that probability remains high. The real problem with Her Alibi, which stars the two together for the first time, lies in the fact that both actors have been so exhaustively typecast that any screenplay written for the both of them would be an exercise in deja...
...movie Her Alibi Selleck plays, to no surprise, a detective-novelist named Phillip Blackwood. Porizkova plays the Romanian beauty, Nina Ionescu, with whom Selleck falls in love. The twist to the plot comes when Nina is on trial for murder. Selleck, who is intrigued by her physical beauty, believes her to be innocent. He takes her under his wing by acting as her alibi; he uses her story to inspire the long overdue book that he is writing, and before you know it, voila, he falls in love with...
...exactly what you'd call a sophisticated concept for a film. Yet, as a "made for television movie," the plot for Her Alibi might be almost palatable. Selleck is in top Magnum P.I. form here--he barely needs to change his act, and one cannot help thinking that that was the original intent of writer/director Bruce Beresford. The cynical and self-deprecating cracks are in full force, and there is even that familiar Selleck voiceover that distinguished the Magnum TV series...
...feel even more at home, it seems Beresford has brought actors James Farentino, disinterred from his TV Dynasty days, and William Daniels, a casualty from the cancellation of the series St. Elsewhere to make guest appearances. Farentino, plays a pushy police lieutenant who does not believe in Nina's alibi, and though he gives a fair presentation of the script, his performance is uninspired. Daniels plays Selleck's whining publishing agent, but all he does is transfer his St. Elsewhere character to the screen. The cast is so familiar, in fact, that if you blink real fast you could almost...