ecl@hocsj.UUCP (11/02/84)
AMERICAN DREAMER
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Cathy Palmer (Jo Beth Williams) is an American housewife with a
monumentally insensitive accountant for a husband. She also has a passion
for pulpy mystery/adventures, particularly those about Rebecca Ryan, a
series heroine modeled on Modesty Blaise. Cathy loves the books so well
that entering a contest to write a Rebecca Ryan story is for her a labor of
love. She wins first prize, a week in Paris and a chance to meet the author
of the Rebecca Ryan books. Shortly after she arrives she is hit by a car
and comes to consciousness believing herself actually to be Rebecca Ryan.
She goes to Rebecca's fictional residence, somehow finds she knows her way
around it, and picks up a bemused sidekick, Alan McMann (Tom Conti), whom
she believes to be Rebecca's fictional partner Dimitri. With McMann, she
goes to an Embassy ball , and, behaving like Rebecca Ryan, she falls into
the coils of a real international plot.
As should be obvious, this is a story with coincidences and holes in
the plot so big that their only explanation is supernatural. The plots that
Palmer's mystery-saturated mind create somehow always materialize in
reality. While the film struggles to capture the flavor of cheap detective
fiction, the script owes more to DON QUIXOTE. With a little more care, the
film could have been another ROMANCING THE STONE. Instead it is conspicuous
for its wanton disregard for loose ends, yawning gaps in logic, and
incredible coincidences.
The film is very well cast. Williams and Conti make an appealing team
as they run around Paris collecting clues and unmasking different villains
involved in unrelated plots. The film is better cast than plotted.
(Evelyn C. Leeper for)
Mark R. Leeper
...ihnp4!lznv!mrl