Yesterday’s movie: Return to me

David Duchovny and Minnie Driver star in this movie that could have been a great romantic comedy. Writer/director Bonnie Hunt, who also plays Driver’s best friend even though she looks too old for the role, is to blame for not realizing the potential of Return To Me. Maybe its the influence of marketing focus groups impinging on director’s creativity because there are too many examples when this film attempts to crossover into slapstick.

Maybe it’s because the role of Duchovny’s mirror is split between the David Alan Grier and Jim Belushi characters, Driver’s mirror (Hunt) is not strong enough in that regards, and the script throws in an extra mirror for the two stars as a couple in the characters played by Marianne Muellerleile and William Bronder. A mirror is a supporting character who’s action and dialog are intended to point out important facets of the lead characters. Sometimes the antagonist will be a mirror of the protagonist, as in, say Superman and Lex Luthor, and other times it will be a supporting character as in this movie. But if the director spreads the mirror aspect too widely, as in this movie, the audience isn’t able to appreciate it.

When Hunt keeps the film focused on the romance (and by the way, she takes too long to get there), it’s great. To use a baseball analogy, this film is like a long fly ball that the outfielder has to climb the wall to catch; it almost gets a recommendation but not quite.