One Fine Day Blu-ray Review
Whose definition of "fine" are we using?
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, January 12, 2013
Most of you who watch even a little bit of television have no doubt heard of (or probably even
watched)
ER, but are you similarly aware of
E/R? Now that distinction is not merely some typographically picayune
differentiation, for there were indeed two shows with more or less the same title.
ER, bearing the imprimatur of
former doctor and best selling author Michael Crichton, premiered in 1994 and ran for an astounding fifteen years,
becoming one of the longest running medically themed series in the history of television.
E/R, on the other
hand, debuted in 1984 with little more than star Elliot Gould to put it on the map, and despite coming out of the gate
very strongly in its opening couple of weeks, quickly faded, unable to compete with a little show known as
The A
Team, and ultimately being canceled after only one season.
E/R was a rather sharply written sitcom, and it
in fact was one of my favorite series that year. It followed in the footsteps of other ensemble comedies set in various
work settings, like
Night Court which had debuted as a midseason replacement in January 1984, nine months
before
E/R's debut. As with most of these work themed series, there was a large and colorful supporting cast,
including such wonderful character actors as Jason Alexander, Conchata Farrell and Lynne Moody. A lesser known
actress named Shuko Akune delivered what has become one of the few elements of the series to enter the popular
lexicon, her frequently shouted admonition to "Stay in back of the white line!"
Way down in the cast of
characters was a good looking young intern who wandered in and out of several episodes, a man named "Ace" Kolmar.
Playing that role was a then unknown actor named George Clooney. Of course the gentle irony here is that Clooney
would erupt into true mainstream star status a decade or so later when he starred in that "other"
ER. But for
fans who had only known him in the Crichton
ER, unaware of his earlier comedic efforts in
E/R (or other
sitcoms like
Roseanne), his affable work in the middling rom-com
One Fine Day might have come as
something of a surprise.
There's something immediately problematic about a film that titles itself after a long ago hit song, in this case The
Chiffons'
1963 blockbuster (updated to a jazz
chanteuse version by Natalie Merchant for the film). It's lazy marketing at
best,
calculated mendacity at worst, and it gives any film that follows this gambit
a prefab feeling from the get go. And in fact
One Fine Day does suffer from a certain cut and paste quality that
hampers far too many romantic comedies. We have two harried single parents, Melanie Parker (Michelle Pfeiffer), a
workaholic architect, and Jack Taylor (George Clooney), and kind of disheveled reporter (is there any other kind?), who
through the sort of domino effect that only ever happens in romantic comedies are forced to band together for, well,
"one
fine day" in order to parent each other's children as well as meet their work obligations. The set up if formulaic by its
very
nature, and
One Fine Day does little to break out of that mold (some might even call it a rut).
One Fine Day is a film that is built out of a number of contrivances. The first of these is that we have two single
parents, a father (Jack) with an adorable daughter Maggie (Mae Whitman), and a mother (Melanie) with a hyperactive
son Sammy (Alex D. Linz). (This is kind of like
The Brady Bunch via China's "one child" policy.) The second of
these is that Melanie happens to be Jack's ex-wife's neighbor and is slated to
take Maggie to school the day of the film. The third of these is that Jack's ex-wife shows up on Jack's doorstep with
Maggie in tow early that morning, desperate to leave on her honeymoon with her new husband but panicked because
her babysitting options have all not panned out. In a laundry list of things to do and people to contact, the ex-wife tells
Jack that Melanie is slated to take Maggie to school for a long planned for field trip and to make sure to let her know if
he doesn't want Melanie to do that. Guess what happens?
So, Jack being the kind of laid back "go with the flow" sort of guy he is, of course does
not call Melanie, and
Melanie meanwhile has her own challenges that morning, leading to both parents showing up at the school too late to
get their kids off to the field trip. What to do? Melanie has an all important, career changing presentation to do and
Jack is hot on the trail of the biggest story of his career. Contrivance, contrivance, contrivance. After a couple of halting
early skirmishes, the two parents reach a sort of détente whereby Jack agrees to watch both kids while Melanie does
her presentation and Melanie will return the favor so that Jack can head off certain disaster that's brewing with regard
to a recent story he's published, something that has a five o'clock deadline, when a press conference is being called.
I am the parent of two boys and let me just go on record as stating that though I am a relatively
laissez faire
Dad, if either of my kids acted the way the kids in the film do, they'd be duct taped and zip tied to their chairs like that
unruly Icelandic Air passenger whose
picture
went viral a couple of weeks ago. Maggie has a tendency to wander away and play "hide and seek", leading to
disastrous consequences about midway through the film, and little Sammy is desperately in need of Adderall, or
whatever the going ADHD prescription was back in 1996. The kid is all over the place, wreaking havoc wherever he
goes, and though Melanie ultimately
does lose it with him, she then more or less apologizes, telling the little
disaster magnet that it's not his fault. Yes, yes it is.
Aside from that perhaps tangential qualm, while the rest of
One Fine Day is predictable almost to a tee, it's not
unenjoyable. There's a certain retro feel to the piece, including copious use of split screens while various people are on
(hilariously oversized) cell phones and the like, making the film play like an updated version of
Pillow Talk. In fact it's not hard to imagine this film as a fifties
feature with Rock and Doris, hating each other at first sight and then of course falling madly in love. In the world of
rom-com, some things never change.
