Film Has Laughs, Romance, But Doesn’t Work

It may only happen but once a month, but I do hate movies. I went to see “Space Jam” and couldn’t even stomach the thought of reviewing it, it was so bad.

Instead, I’ll review “The Mirror Has Two Faces,” which was just mediocre.

Very rarely does a romantic comedy try to have much of a moral. In most of the cases when it does, the moral becomes so important that the story ends up playing second fiddle to the message, and the movie suffers because of it.

In “Mirror,” the moral seems to take precedent over the plot of the film and then, instead of a fulfilling and inspirational ending, it turns its back on the message and negates everything the movie stood for in the beginning.

I figure it would be unfair to explain by giving away the end of the film, but halfway through the movie, the end is easily predicted.

Jeff Bridges plays Greg Larkin, a math professor at Columbia who is a boring teacher, the author of a boring book and generally a boring guy. He is sick and tired of relationships being ruined by sex, so he tries to start one that won’t have anything to do with romance.

To find the ideal mate for such a match, he takes out an ad. In this ad, he asks that the respondent have a Ph.d, but states that “appearance is not important.” Who does the search turn up but Rose Morgan, played by Barbra Streisand.

Rose and Greg hit it off immediately, as best friends that is. Greg thinks he has reached perfection - an intelligent, funny woman who not only likes him but understands his obscure math theorems. Rose, however, is not quite so happy.

At first, she’s content with the relationship, but after her best friend, sister and mother find out about the chaste relationship, they not only question its merits but make Rose do the same. She starts to expect more than Greg is ready to give and everything goes wrong.

To say that this film wasn’t romantic would be untrue, as would saying that it wasn’t funny. So the question remains, why didn’t it work?

The concept behind the majority of the movie - that a relationship can not only work without sex but be better because of it - is a good idea. It is even fairly original. But then it’s forgotten. For one character to have such a strong belief in the idea and then forget it for the sake of the romance he is trying to avoid is about the worst thing a movie can do.

Anyway, Streisand looks way too good throughout the movie for her supposed ugly-duckling role. Rose Morgan is supposed to be an unattractive middle-aged woman who can’t get a date. True, she’s no Cindy Crawford, but she’s miscast nonetheless.

If you are the kind of moviegoer who forgets about a film as soon as you walk out of the theater, you may just like “The Mirror Has Two Faces.” If you reflect on films at all, or appreciate morals, this movie might just make you as sick as it made me.

Grade: C-