Musical dancer on the way out (at 36) Paula McFadden had it swell with actor Tony DeSanti, but instead of taking her to Hollywood he gets a European movie part. He even sublets their (his) New York apartment to Elliot Garfield, who generously lets her stay, even keeping the master bedroom. Pragmatic pre-teen daughter Lucy soon takes to his charm, but Paula remains determined to hate all actors. Despite the stress of a Broadway Shakespeare lead he must play too queer for Frisco, he's determined to snatch romance from ingratitude.
Reviews
Paula McFadden (Patricia Heaton) is 36 and a little too old to be a dancer. She is left behind by her married actor boyfriend Tony DeForrest for a job in Italy. She doesn't have any money staying in the apartment with her daughter Lucy (Hallie Kate Eisenberg). It turns out that Tony sublet his apartment to Elliot Garfield (Jeff Daniels) out from under her. She refuses to leave and Elliot reluctantly agrees to let her stay.Patricia Heaton is wrong for this role. She can't pull off even a former dancer. Also I don't think that she's quite right to be Eisenberg's mom. She's much better in a soccer mom role. Daniels is charming. Eisenberg is great as the talkative little girl. The Neil Simon play is still good but everything is a little bit off. The '77 movie is perfectly fine. This feels like a faded copy. The apartment doesn't have quite the NYC feel. I do like Eisenberg with Daniels and their scene together is great. Basically the movie feels wrong but it still has the essence of a good story.
I thought Patricia Heaton did a fantastic job as Paula but No1 was as good as Richard Dreyfuss. They could have done a better job with the casting of Elliot too. Jeff Daniels was mediocre @ best. I also liked the daughter in this one better. The script was almost verbatim & it was still funny but I wasn't rolling & laughing so hard my sides hurt like I did when I first saw the 1977 version. As my title says: it was good but not great. They could have done a LOT worse. Look how horribly musicals like Best Little Whorehouse in Texas ; for one; the movie totally sucked. The musical was much better. All in all I give this remake of a classic a 6. I like how they modernized it too although it didn;t fit in the original plot. IE: Elliot first tries to use his cell phone . Then he drops it & breaks it. They didn't have cell phones in 1977. They were also talking a lot about revivals & improvs which are much more common now.
After I saw a little clip before the movie was shown, I thought the movie was going to be good; however, I guess my expectations were a bit too high. The movie was horrible and it had a mediocre plot line. Jeff Daniels and Patricia Heaton did not connect at all. I thought Lucy was way too smart for her age so it seemed a bit unrealistic. It seemed to me that Patricia Heaton fell in love with Jeff Daniels a bit too fast. One minute they are avoiding each other, and then the next scene you see the two in a bathroom making out. The movie barely had any funny parts with the exception of two events.Overall, the move just seemed stupid after a bit watching it and could have been revised much better than it was shown as a television movie.
I didn't like this movie. I think it was stupid, boring and unrealistic. The whole movie had a bad plot and a bad ending. There was no humor in the movie. There didn't seem to be any chemistry between the two of them. And so I don't think the acting worked for the movie. It was unrealistic because in the real world, if a single woman with a child had a man come to live with her that she didn't know, i don't think that she would let him in. They didn't know each other for that long, and every minute they were even near each other they were fighting or weren't together or talking. It doesn't seem like they would be able to fall in love that quickly.