Touches You

Simply A Masterpiece

A lot of fun.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Easy on the mind, on the eyes, and on the ears.Geena Davis and Michael Keaton make the most of the best lines in the script, and support from Christopher Reeve is excellent. The film stutters on occasion and may be ten minutes or so too long, but it manages to keep you interested, just.Watch for the continuity errors when Geena manages to get herself engaged during one short bedtime phone call. The ring that didn't come from the phone!!! And what an appearance by the red Morgan convertible, put through its paces by Davis and Keaton in more than one way.Good for a night in with popcorn, chocs, and ice cream.

I guess you could say this contains a partial spoiler.* * * * I'm a little perplexed at the low ratings most folks seem to give this movie. I think it's because people tend to look at movies as a total product. Me, I'm the kind of guy who can appreciate a classic car, and overlook the rust spots.That's kind of where we are on this movie -- a movie that hits on seven out of eight cylinders. The problem is that romantic comedy is the most difficult of genres, and for most folks, it has to hit on all eight to "work." Viewers think about their feelings; they don't analyze a romantic movie in an intellectual way, and if something doesn't quite work, they leave the theater feeling dissatisfied without knowing exactly why.This movie has so much going for it -- a good premise, clever banter, believable characters, and a romance that doesn't seem forced. And for me, there's a double appeal -- I've worked in the press/political world, and all I can say is I can tell the writers must have been there, too.Was it miscast? Was it shallow? Was the dialog unrealistic? Was everyone too cute? Was the "strange bedfellows" premise beyond belief? Naah. None of that.The problem is the third act. I don't want to give away too much, but we have a scene in a bar in which Michael Keaton is given some interesting information, and he has a choice to make. Now, the movie might have spun in a half-dozen interesting directions from this point -- first time I saw it, I was half-sitting up in my chair, once I recognized where the whole thing was leading. I couldn't tell quite where it was going, but I knew it was going to be mighty interesting. There was plenty of dramatic potential, the sort you always need at the start of the third act in a comedy, to make the ending seem a happy relief. The way it spun out in my mind, I suppose the movie would have gone on for another five or six scenes.But here's the trouble -- the next scene is the big climax at the balloon fiesta, and the producers settled for an ending so simple, so dishonest, so downright cheap, that I'm sure it's the thing that left the bad taste in most moviegoers' mouths. Up to this point the movie was a clever comedy of words and ideas and romance; suddenly we got slapstick.How on earth could something like this have happened? How could writers who had done such a good job up to this point have failed so miserably at the climax? My guess is that they didn't -- my guess is that someone with a complete lack of understanding of the material took a movie with a complex, adult, and somewhat ambiguous ending, something in which there were no heroes and no villains, and decided to "improve" it.Or maybe a different ending was shot, and it didn't test well in Pomona, and the studio tried another approach.Or maybe the studio decided to save a little money by cutting 15 minutes out of the script.But I suspect some big-time tinkering here -- something that basically spoiled the movie for most viewers, and turned a potential classic into a bomb.Wouldn't it be cool if another ending was shot -- and if someday a "director's cut" might be made available? There was so much "right" about this movie, I hated to see it spoiled by a botched last couple of minutes.Erik Smith Olympia, Wash.

When now a days the only news one hears are tragic and when going to the movies is basically to see violence and sex, it is always refreshing to see a cute silly movie that allows you to smile and spend an hour and a half without suffering through its plot. This movie, in my opinion, carries a little bit of several styles of comedy: situations that make it funny and the use of lines where you have to interpret what they are saying in order for them to make sense and allow you to smile. This movie is very local, in the sense that you have to be a native English speaking person to really understand many of the intended meanings of the dialogues. Any way it is a well spent 90 minutes of your time to relax a little and follow it through with interest. For Spanish speaking viewers, the background song: NO SE TU makes it very worthwhile to watch/hear.

I'm glad the writers of this movie were NOT speechless! Politics does make strange bedfellows, but this film was written well enough that it didn't require bed scenes for it to be entertaining to adults and proves that love can be a funny thing.The very witty banter between Keaton's and Davis' characters is lively and thoroughly enjoyable. Their chemistry is wonderful and believable. The storyline is credible, too. It probably doesn't happen often inside opposite political camps but, just as Carville and Matlin are living examples that relationships can survive working for opposing party candidates, you'll savor watching the film's characters discover that love is the most important party.I voted SPEECHLESS an "8" – it's one you'll enjoying recalling again and again.