This is one of my all time favourites since the first time I saw it. No one is shot, blown up,, run over. No digital effects. No bombs, no explosions. Just a nice story, good cast, and fun script. Always been a big Billy Crystal fan as well as Debra Winger. The rest of the cast are also all well known actors who do a great job in a unique story told by flashbacks. It's one of the few films I can pull out every couple of years, sit back and enjoy.

It seems like Billy Crystal wanted to make the perfect sequel to When Harry Met Sally (1989), a movie he starred earlier with Meg Ryan, where they portrayed 2 persons who fall in love. Now, in Forget Paris, we follow 2 similar persons who fall in love THEN get marry (You won't deny how Debra Winger looks like Meg Ryan in some moments). Forget Paris, also, transfers you to Casablanca (1942), the Hollywood masterpiece, in terms of love story in Pairs, with a married woman, then the promise of "We'll always have Paris" (Casablanca was the favorite movie for both Harry and Sally as well). So Crystal decided to make use of love, as a romantic fantasy from those 2 movies, for none other than smashing it when it turns into marriage, only to build it all over again, but not before understanding the consciences and responsibilities of it. So forget Paris, but don't forget love itself. Hence we have : The subject of love during marriage, which's brilliant and uncommon in modern Hollywood movies. Crystal, a super comedian, who wrote it and directed it as well. Winger who's absolute magic, even if she recorded her voice while reading the newspaper's political columns. And a clever supporting cast that every comedy yearns for. So why the final result isn't as good as all of that ?!I think the script is the basic guilty. Yes, the plot of detached flashbacks is thrilling, there are classic comedic scenes (like the one with the sweetest prenup I have ever witnessed), and – in the end – it's like "Hey.. all of the marriage's problems is just another dinner". Nevertheless, right after the marriage happened, the situations got colder, and the good lines got lesser. There was not enough energy, or laughing.Moreover, the comedy leaned to being disgusting, whether with the fertility clinic sequence, or the old father sequence; which was shockingly awful, more of a crime against old people, and such a bad taste that turned me off while the viewing ! The soundtrack is beautifully jazzy. It has a golden selection of oldies. And I believe Ella Fitzgerald's cover of April in Paris was used in a very smart way; during the sad photomontage of the 2 leads' separation near the end. However, while jazz itself is a creative hint that marriage has no known system, and is based on the best improvisation you could ever do—the movie dwelled on that jazzy mood, enjoying a series of mostly uninteresting sketches, leading to common, so laconic, climax which didn't live up to Casablanca or When Harry Met Sally endings.Forget Paris is a rom-com that wanted to be different, and it did, but lost being fast enough, and comic enough in the way. The problem is bigger, putting in mind the powerful potential, and the names involved. It's entertaining and meaningful, which's great combination apart. Though, it needed more craft to be great movie altogether.Finally, wouldn't it eat you to not seeing Crystal in movies that deserve his talent, and utilize it to the max ? For me, in a long 40 years career, from the last 1970s to the late 2010s, still his closest movie to reach that rank is City Slickers (1991) !

This movie was always on the top of my waiting list because I just really like romantic American movies that happen in my country. But right now, I receive it more personally than ever! For me too, an unforgettable story has been born on the banks of the Seine (more the VII district for me). So it's really moving (and fun) to share Crystal/Winger romance blooming. It's a sort of "What If…".For sure, after the fireworks of the meeting, comes the harsh reality that can threaten it! From that moment, the movie turns feeble because the Crystal character is too egomaniac. For me, the best definition for "Love" is when you can forget yourself, and for that instance, Crystal is very deficient and it appears like a totally different person he was in Paris: he doesn't want to quit his job, he doesn't speak to her father… At the same time, Winger shows a lot of compassion and faces great pain for her femininity! It's just too big to be true… But, the story is told with a nice gimmick (the memories from their close friends), it has really funny quotes.

"Forget Paris" is on some ways reminiscent of the work of Woody Allen. Billy Crystal is, like Allen, a diminutive New Yorker who started as a stand-up comic before moving into acting, and his character in this film, Mickey Gordon, has something in common with Woody's self-deprecating creations. The story of Mickey and his wife, Ellen, is told in a series of flashbacks by a group of acquaintances over a meal in a restaurant; Allen had used a similar technique in his "Broadway Danny Rose" and was to do so again in "Melinda and Melinda", although in that film the stories told were invented ones.Mickey meets Ellen when he flies to France to bury his father, who has expressed the wish to be buried with his old Army comrades who were killed during the war. On arrival in Paris, however, Mickey finds that his father's coffin has been lost. Ellen is the airline official responsible for helping him find it. That sounds like the opening for a zany, screwball-type comedy or a macabre black comedy, but "Forget Paris" is neither. It is rather a romantic comedy with a difference. Most rom-coms are about courtship, and end with the marriage or engagement of the couple concerned. This one is as much about what comes after marriage as with what leads up to it; the marriage of Mickey and Ellen comes less than halfway through.After the missing coffin is found, Mickey and Ellen have a whirlwind romance in Paris, leading to their marriage and to her leaving her job in Paris to return with him to America. Paris in American films is typically the city of love and romance; one of these, "An American in Paris", is referred to a number of times. Mickey even sings one of the songs from that film, "Our Love is Here to Stay". The title, "Forget Paris", a phrase used a number of times in the course of their marriage, therefore becomes shorthand for "We've got to put the courtship phase of our relationship behind us and move on to dealing with the problems of married life together".And Mickey and Ellen have plenty of problems. They are unable to have children, and their relationship is put under stress by their contrasting lifestyles. Ellen, cultured and sophisticated, would prefer to live in Paris, but reluctantly agrees to return to America. Mickey is a basketball referee, which means that he spends much of the time travelling around America, leaving Ellen at home. She tries to persuade him to quit his job so that they can spend more time together, and this leads to quarrels between them. Further strain is caused by the arrival of Ellen's irritating elderly father Arthur. Eventually they separate, and Ellen returns to Paris. The title therefore takes on added significance; can Ellen forget Paris, or will she end up forgetting Mickey? Some reviewers have taken exception to the happy ending, such as James Berardinelli, who accused it of lacking "emotional honesty". Of course, it would have been quite possible to turn the story of Mickey and Ellen into a serious study of a failing marriage, but "Forget Paris" was never intended to be a film of that sort. In my view, a happy ending is the only one possible; an unhappy ending to a romantic comedy would be about as appropriate as a series of strident dissonances at the end of a Mozart symphony. And "Forget Paris" is clearly designed to be comic, not tragic.The two leading actors are very different in their styles of acting. As I stated, Billy Crystal started as a stand-up comedian, and specialises in comedies. (I would find it difficult to imagine him in a serious film). He was, of course, the star of "When Harry Met Sally", one of the best romantic comedies of the eighties. Debra Winger, on the other hand, is not an actress I would normally have associated with comedy. In early films such as "Cannery Row" or "An Officer and a Gentleman" she played attractive, vivacious characters, but she later became a rather intense actress, at her best in serious dramas like "Betrayed", "Shadowlands", "Black Widow" or "A Dangerous Woman". I never cared for that lugubrious romantic tragedy "Terms of Endearment", but the fact that Winger won a "Best Actress" Oscar suggests that a lot of other people liked it.The point of casting two such dissimilar actors may have been to emphasise the contrast in character between Mickey and Ellen, a contrast that would have been lessened if Ellen had been played by an experienced romantic comedy actress such as Meg Ryan, Crystal's co-star in "When Harry Met Sally". Winger's performance here suggests that she is not perhaps the world's most naturally gifted comedienne, but she still makes an endearing, if rather earnest, heroine. The difficulties in the Gordons' marriage may stem from the fact that Ellen is a fundamentally more serious person than Mickey, except perhaps where basketball is concerned. (Even the name Mickey, with its associations with Mickey Mouse and "taking the mickey", suggests someone less serious than a Michael or even a Mike). Crystal is very funny in this film, and most of the best lines go to him, although there are also some good contributions from the assembled diners. ("Marriages don't work when one partner is happy and the other is miserable. Marriage is about both people being equally miserable"- that one could be straight out of Woody Allen). There are also some great set pieces, such as the scene in the fertility clinic and the one where Ellen gets a pigeon stuck to her head. Overall, this is an amusing and likable romantic comedy. 7/10