Retro Film Review: Mr. Wrong (1996)

For some time Ellen DeGeneres was America's best known female television comedian. The author of this review thought that her widely-publicised sexual orientation had more to do with that than her talent. At least this was impression given by her first film starring role in Mr. Wrong, 1996 comedy directed by Nick Castle.

Ellen DeGeneres here plays Martha Alston, 30-something woman who is increasingly frustrated by being single and whose greatest ambition is to finally find "Mr. Right", marry and have children. She seems to find that ideal in Whitman Crawford (played by Bill Pullman), man who is well-mannered, well-spoken, artistic and rich. Two of them fall madly in love with each other, but after a while Whitman soon begins to show behaviour which is more fitting to raving psychopath than to man in love. Martha tries to do sensible thing and end the relationship, but Whitman is not the man who can say "no". To make matters worse for Martha, she is also being stalked by Inga Gunther (played by Joan Cusack), Whitman's pathologically jealous ex-girlfriend.

The idea behind Mr. Wrong was simple - to make parody of romantic comedies about lonely women finding men of their dreams in people seemingly unsuitable for that roles. The idea was to simply twist the scenario and make Mr. Right into Mr. Wrong. Problem for film makers was in their scenario resulting in film that depicts stalking - very serious real-life issue that could hardly serve as basis for comedy. On the other hand, The Cable Guy proved that it could be done. But makers of Mr. Wrong obviously lacked the most important ingredient for this or any comedy - sense of humour. After some fifteen minutes or so, it becomes apparent that most jokes fall flat and the actors seem to be aware of that as much as the audience; apart from Pullman, they all display enthusiasm of people being brought in front of camera at gunpoint . Ellen DeGeneres' comedic talent is nowhere to be seen. Thankfully, nobody would force audience to sit through Mr. Wrong, film with fitting title.

RATING: 2/10 (-)

(Note: The text in its original form was posted in Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.films.reviews on November 6th 2003)

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Movie URL: https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/47475-mr-wrong
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