SERIOUS MOONLIGHT (Alliance, 2009) D: Cheryl Hines, w/ Meg Ryan, Timothy Hutton. Rating: NNN DVD package: NN Rating: NNN
Depending on your taste, Meg Ryan comes across as cute and charming or trying so hard to be cute and charming that she looks sick and desperate. Either response works well for Serious Moonlight, which yo-yos between comedy and relationship drama.
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Ryan plays a high-powered lawyer who duct-tapes her husband to the toilet when she learns he’s leaving her for a younger woman. A burglar interrupts her attempts to regain his love.
If you’re charmed by Ryan, this is a set-up for farce if not, the signs point toward Misery-style psychological horror. Sadly, the movie delivers neither, but opts for the safest middle ground possible.
Along the way, Serious Moonlight delivers some good laughs and serious moments, many of them the work of Timothy Hutton as the luckless husband.
The commentary by director Cheryl Hines and producers Andy Ostroy and Michael Roiff offers a few chuckles and some so-so production stories.
EXTRAS Commentary, making-of doc. Widescreen. English, French audio. French subtitles.
