This is How Movies Should Be Made

Perfectly adorable

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Really more enjoyable than I expected. The Mark Harmon character is a cad, but hey, he even made Ted Bundy somewhat appealing. The girls are believable, the friends are good, and the plot ends predictably yet still manages to entertain. I'm glad I saw it. Really more enjoyable than I expected. The Mark Harmon character is a cad, but hey, he even made Ted Bundy somewhat appealing. The girls are believable, the friends are good, and the plot ends predictably yet still manages to entertain. I'm glad I saw it.Really more enjoyable than I expected. The Mark Harmon character is a cad, but hey, he even made Ted Bundy somewhat appealing. The girls are believable, the friends are good, and the plot ends predictably yet still manages to entertain. I'm glad I saw it.

So, it's about five o'clock in the morning and I'm about to put a tape in the VCR to watch some Asian action movie, but decide to channel-flip for a few minutes first. I come across the beginning of Worth Winning, an obvious cheesy '80s half-heartedly tongue-in-cheek "bad boy" romance, seemingly targeted for daytime soap audiences. I usually never watch stuff like that. All the horrible light-blue and pink sweaters the characters wear instantly give me a bad taste in my mouth, but in this case I keep watching because Madeleine Stowe catches my eye. Young, cute and sophisticated, and many leagues above this material, she is delightful to watch. So I watch the whole movie.Apart from its bad taste in clothes and generally preposterous premise, shallow characters and completely unrealistic situations, it's not that bad. It has a classic structure, actually. As seen in many other stories, we have a guy going through three stages, or in this case, three women. The middle-aged rich aristocrat (loosely representing monarchy), the virginal romantic maiden (loosely representing the romantic ideals and rituals aspired to in the conservative bourgeois lifestyle) and the intellectual artist (loosely representing the realization of the full human potential for independent thinking and self-expression). These three, on the symbol level, represent three different social orders: old and obsolete royalist aristocracy, current republican bourgeoisie and a future liberal utopia. As it ends with the attaining of the latter, the story actually does have some redeeming artistic and social value, in that it - in a very subtle and non-literal way, of course - urges the audience to embrace a new, better and freer social order. This storytelling structure is actually very literate, and I'm not surprised the storyline came from a novel.Now, if only the movie wasn't thoroughly suffused by that insufferable Barbara Cartland air, it might garner a higher rating than a 6 out of 10.

Mark Harmon in a ridiculous comedy about a swinging TV weather guy who bets with 3 friends that he can get engaged to 3 girls within a 3 month period.The lucky people in this inane foolishness are 2 of the 3 friends. After the wager is made, they are rarely if ever seen for the rest of this dismal flick.You don't have to be a rocket scientist to realize that the three girls will eventually find out and plot revenge. Madeleine Stowe is a concert pianist. Moody, she appears the most difficult for Harmon to conquer. There's also a female sports player and a bored housewife married to a millionaire. The latter played by the reliable Lesley Ann Warren.The basic problem with this film is really who cares?There is of course the wedding scene where the intended lady says no at the last minute and you can readily guess who her bridesmaids are. Then, Harmon will have to win her back in a raffle!Predictable nonsense. One of the bettors was a psychiatrist. He should have ordered therapy for all involved in this flick.

Taylor Worth is a TV weatherman in Philadelphia whose male friends are married, while he is still single. His friend Ned bets Taylor that he can't get three women to say yes to a marriage proposal (the acceptance must be on videotape). If Ned loses, he must give up an original Picasso which his wife inherited. The first woman is Erin, a beautiful blonde receptionist for the Eagles football team, who seems to have an attraction to Tarry Childs, one of the players. There is also Veronica, a pianist who doesn't like the term 'new age', and Eleanor, who is unhappily married.All three women go with Taylor to see the movie 'Snow White', and each has a different reaction. I suppose the usher (Arthur Malet) was supposed to be amazed at Taylor's love for that movie, but it was hard to tell. I kept expecting some classic line from him.Taylor talked to the audience a lot, and occasionally other characters did the same. That might have worked, but I didn't like him that well. I liked Erin but not the other women, and found myself wishing he would settle for Erin. Unfortunately, Taylor had to find a way out of each engagement, and his excuse for not marrying Erin made for some good (if off-color) laughs. The best part of the movie at first was seeing Ned's dismay as he came ever closer to losing the bet. And, of course, Taylor nearly gets caught a few times, which is good for a few laughs. The women don't seem to mind being videotaped, though not all of them are aware of it. Toward the end, something happens that comes close to making the movie hilarious, but the events don't quite come together to make this satisfying. It was funny, but not a classic. SPOILER: If you must know why this movie got better, the three women found out about the bet, and they set out for revenge, which was quite funny, especially at the engagement party with one of the women, and at the wedding with another.