Movies
Untamed Heart
Beauty-and-Beast romance (more the Beauty and the Beast TV series than any other version: the withdrawn watchdog in his subterranean haven) between a Minneapolis coffee-shop waitress with "too good a heart" and a scraggly-haired busboy with a medically "bad" heart. The image is too soft and smeary for the blue-collar ambience, as though filtered through tear-moistened eyes, and the plot mechanics are elementary (a couple of unmotivated troublemakers, first would-be rapists, then would-be assassins), and the sentiments are ruinously waterlogged ("magic" phonograph records, a lovers' montage to the accompaniment of a goldie-oldie, an errant hockey puck speared in slow-motion with a bare hand). Yet the movie is not unenjoyable. Marisa Tomei, attaining levels of spunkiness and resilience worthy of commemoration in a C&W song, embellishes her character with one of the less fashionable, less defined, less simple and easy of regional accents: the Minnesota Scandihoovian. (In distinct contrast to her blaring New York/New Jersey one in My Cousin Vinny.) She, the only principal player to try to fit into the surroundings, does marvelous things with completely unpromising word-clusters such as "St. Paul" ("Pahl") and "cozy little apartment" (first word: more like "coozy," and then "l'il," and then a dip down on the middle syllable of the third word, like stepping into and out of a ditch). And as if she were not cute enough -- poignant enough -- already! Christian Slater, Rosie Perez; directed by Tony Bill. 1993.
— Duncan Shepherd
Reader Rating:
- MPAA Rating: PG-13
