Word: palmers
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...Cathy Palmer (JoBeth Williams) is one such excitement-starved Middle American, a suburban housewife hooked on the trashy romantic adventures of a Modesty Blaise clone called Rebecca Ryan. Her execrable taste in literature can be excused as a casualty of her suburban lifestyle; a station wagon, two sons exuding Gary Colemanesque sass, and a husband who's idea of a romantic evening is his and hers spreadsheets...
...Palmer's addiction has one redeeming feature; she knows the novels so well that she wins a trip for two to romantic Paris, paid by the publishers of her favorite pablum, and, by a piece of mysterious movie luck, her ever-vigilant husband cannot chaperone...
...Rebecca Ryan award luncheon in Paris, Palmer and fate (in the guise of a Citreon) collide in front of Notre Dame, Exit verisimilitude and enter that soap opera mainstay, selective amnesia. Palmer wakes up in a hospital, without her handbag, thinking that she is Rebecca Ryan...
Confusion is heaped upon confusion as McMann vainly attempts to separate the deadly reality from the crazy fantasies of Palmer, but with no real success. Conti, with the theatrical-magic he brought to Reuben, Reuben and The Norman Chronicles, transforms the whiny, irresolute McMann he found in the script into a sexy and sympathetic British playboy. With a perfectly raised eyebrow and a fatalistic shrug, Conti is Man confronted with the inexplicable essence of uninhibited feminity. Conti is God's gift to romantic comedy, an Italo-British Cary Grant who consistently surpasses every superlative piled on his previous performances...
...direction and script also assume secondary importance when Conti is on the screen. Director Rick Rosenthal starts the film off slowly; the first quarter of the movie up to Palmer's arrival in Paris bears an embarrassing resemblance to three or four well-known television sitcoms. But Paris allows him to hit his stride, and move the movie along at a comfortably fast clip. The script by Jim Kouf and Jeff Greenwalt would not, by itself, bust any guts, but then again, with Conti on their side it does not have...