The Worst Film Ever

Such a frustrating disappointment

Blistering performances.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Forget Paris (Billy Crystal, 1995) is a rather chilly examination of how tricky it can be to forge a happy marriage, with a few cartoonish episodes chucked in alongside. Billy Crystal does his usual schtick as he romances Debra Winger, though the structure is pure Woody Allen - the whole film told by a group of friends at a party - and the foreign funeral set-up half-inched somewhat obviously from Billy Wilder's underrated Avanti!. The result is somewhat unsatisfactory. It's certainly no Moonstruck or Broadway Danny Rose, but it's not even When Harry Met Sally - and the Paris-set sections were disappointingly brief considering I'd just returned from my travels and was secretly hankering for a glossily-photographed sight-seeing tour. There are comic compensations, though. Playing a basketball referee, Crystal's meltdown on the court is the obvious highlight - along with his senile father-in-law's fondness for regurgitating ad slogans. "You asked for it... you got it. Toyota. You asked for it... you got it. Toyota. You asked for it... you got it. Toyota."

"Forget Paris" is a feel-good romantic comedy about the on again off again relationship between Mickey (Billy Crystal, who also directed, produced and was one of the writers), an NBA referee, and Ellen (Debra Winger), a customer relations trouble shooter for an airline.Friends of sports writer Andy (Joe Mantegna) are gathering at a restaurant to be introduced to Liz (Cynthia Stevenson) before their wedding. Liz comments that how she and Andy met must be the oddest ever (a fax had one digit off in the fax number and went to Andy by mistake). Andy says no, how Mickey met Ellen is the weirdest. They met because she helped him bury his father. That starts the friends telling the story of Mickey and Ellen.Some critics consider this way of telling the story and the plot stale and schmaltzy; but it is so well done that I could care less.The film genre is romantic comedy; this film's strength is the comedy part of that term. I could give examples but comedy is best when the punchline (or its visual equivalent) is unexpected. Let me just say that one of my favorite bits starts with the focus on an organist going through the motions of preparing to play serious music.Billy Crystal is known to be a serious basketball fan and in part the film is like a documentary about refereeing NBA games, with a huge number of basketball stars playing themselves. I was bemused at the end of the credits when the standard disclaimer came up saying that all the characters and names in the film were fictitious. Not hardly in this film.I should mention that Cynthia Stevenson's hysterically tearful performance as Liz listening to Mickey's and Ellen's highs and lows was great.I also loved the sound track. Ella Fitzgerald singing "April in Paris" is so great; also, Billy Holiday doing the opening "Our Love Is Here To Stay." David Sanborn's saxophone version of the "Star Spangled Banner" is also particularly great.My one quibble is that I found Debra Winger's voice very sexy in 1982's "Officer and a Gentleman" and she didn't sound the same in 1995's "Forget Paris." I probably don't sound the same as I did 13 years ago either.

"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

I saw the movie already 5 or 6 times - actually today the first time in English. We had to bring the DVD from the US as not being released in Germany (yet). I think it's a very romantic film and perfect for couples with a weekend relationship. It is also reflecting life in a positive way: it is difficult, entertaining, funny at the right and at the wrong place.Just realized how many funny Billy Crystal punchlines are in the movie. Finally Billy Crystal and Debra winger are playing it perfect: emotional and touching, but not overly dramatic.Keeps being one of my favorites.