Despite ailing `weepie' plot, `Return to Me' has real heart

Movie review

XXX "Return to Me," with David Duchovny, Minnie Driver. Directed by Bonnie Hunt, from a script by Bonnie Hunt and Don Lake. 115 minutes. Several theaters. "PG" - Parental guidance advised because of language and some thematic elements.

God bless Bonnie Hunt. As writer and director of "Return to Me," the actress / comedian (she was the best friend in "Jerry Maguire") tries to perform a heart transplant on the ailing, arrhythmic romantic comedy.

The plot that she's transferred to save the patient comes from what would have historically been called a "a woman's weepie" - great, pillowed, swooning heaps of melodrama like "Dark Victory" or "An Affair to Remember." The operation is, in most respects, a success.

The romantic comedy element of "Return to Me" is the tale of Bob Rueland (David Duchovny), an architect and widower who meets and falls for Grace Briggs (Minnie Driver), a waitress in an Irish / Italian bar. Grace has made a full recovery from heart-transplant surgery and is very self-conscious of her sternum scar. Little does anyone know (except us) that she was the recipient of the organ from - and this is the "woman's weepie" part - Bob's beloved first wife, Elizabeth (Joely Richardson).

That Hunt initially melds these two sub-genres together without getting silly, sappy or soggy is really a feat unto itself. The romance between the still-grieving Bob and the inexperienced but exuberant Grace is aided and abetted by Grace's grandfather (Carroll O'Connor, great here), her great uncle (Robert Loggia) and their band of card-playing cronies - and the movie hums along.

And then, just when things are going well, Bob and Grace get together and everything goes soft. These two don't test each other, or spar, as Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert did in "It Happened One Night," or verbally joust as Gwyneth Paltrow and Joseph Fiennes did in "Shakespeare in Love." They bowl.

The sequences demonstrating the couple's happiness are all spaghetti and no sauce. Their conflict is the inevitable revelation about the recipient of Elizabeth's heart and, once that shoe drops, the triumph over their differences seems more a triumph of communication than a triumph of love.

Duchovny is the greatest victim of the lackluster late-second-act courtship. At first, he's very good as the grieving Bob, trying to jump-start his life. But once Bob starts seeing Grace, the clutch in Duchovny's performance starts to slip. Maybe it's just his appearance. Halfway through, he dons a senior-portrait hair-do and he suddenly, distractingly, looks like a basketball coach's assistant sitting courtside at the big game against State U.

As Grace, Minnie Driver proves she's one of the only young actresses around who seems capable of actually playing a mature woman. As she did voluptuously in "Big Night," she demonstrates that there's a there there. She's smart enough to allow Grace to live a little (after all, this character's been deathly ill since she was 14 years old), but also to be cautious with her new heart. Though there are no true standouts in "Return" - it's a team venture - Driver is perhaps the most valuable player.

But Hunt allows all of her performers their due. Characters we see only once are given juicy bits; supporting characters, even old supporting characters are given snappy bits of dialogue and affecting scenes. It's not a genuine movie, but it's a genuine attempt at a genuine movie, and that's pretty good these days.

"Return to Me" is also director Bonnie Hunt's first theatrical feature. Although she's fine in her supporting roles, let's hope she'll get a chance to make a career out of this.