Melanie Parker is a high powered business woman, who expertly juggles her domestic and professional life. What makes things even better is that she is on the cusp of a very lucrative promotion, if she manages to sell her dream of a new city to her company. She is always prepared, uptight, ultra professional and fun deficient.
Jack Taylor on the other hand has always shied away from commitment. As a journalist, he is good, but is far too naive and flirts too much to take a story very seriously. At the moment he is sure that revealing a government cover up will make him infamous, but his witnesses are backing out of their statements, and he has no way of proving his theory. He is never prepared, happy go lucky, unprofessional and full of fun.
These two very different characters meet up when Jack suddenly finds out that he has to look after his daughter Maggie, as his ex wife is going on her honeymoon. He is told that Melanie will be picking up his daughter from her house, so he has to get her there before eight, or Sam (Melanie’s son) and Maggie will miss their school trip to visit a huge boat! Due to Jack’s unreliability, both the young students miss their trip! Melanie has to be at a very important presentation and Jack needs to trace up his witnesses.
Melanie tries to do her work. She collects her perfect model of her new town, and is convinced that she will get the amazing promotion. Everything is going great, until Sam wrecks her work and drives a remote control car into her leg, which makes her fall over and ruin the presentation! She could quite easily lose her job. Meanwhile back at
the newspaper station Maggie is going down a storm, but Jack’s next assignment is very dangerous, so she can’t go with him.
So both of our parents are forced to send their children to a dodgy day care centre, which it turns out is full of bullies and apparent drug addicts, which leaves to the age old question children ask their mothers ‘mom what is LSD?’ So as you can imagine both the parents take their children out of the awful place. Jack, as he doesn’t have a major deadline takes both the children out for the day, on the proviso that Melanie does the same for him later.
We follow the two different personalities as they struggle with their work. Each one of them flirting desperately with each other, but neither one actually liking the other. Can a proper relationship work, if two people have such different personalities?
Will the two stay together? What will happen to Maggie and Sam? Will each one of them keep their jobs?
One Fine Day is wonderful to look at. For production values it is miles ahead of other entries in the rom com genre. It manages to make New York look stunning, sophisticated and the centre of culture. The camera work is amazing, and the whole film is very well laid out, with a clever use of people’s awareness. It has a lovely sense of old Hollywood about it in the sense that it is visually simple, but also wildly colorful and the two leads both look amazing. Also it has a clever way of imbedding the time in the viewers brain, by making clocks pop up everywhere they possible can. Visually One Fine Day is colorful, stylish, interesting and has a wonderful sense of nostalgia.
Michelle Phieffer is a brilliant actress, and in One Fine Day, she proves why she is so highly regarded in the business of show. She plays her character with warmth; charisma and grace, without making Melanie lose any of her sharp business sense, ruthless determination, or wild feminist edge. She really embodies the character of a loving, mother, who doesn’t actually like herself very much, and hates what she has become perfectly. I think that she adds some fantastic aspects to the character which may not have been in the script. I also liked the way in which she dealt with the touchy subject of divorce; overall I think it was a brilliant performance, which adds to the feel and emotion of the film, brilliantly.
The ever charming George Clooney has an infectious bounciness in One Fine Day. He has a fantastic rapour with Phieffer which makes their on screen relationship so much fun to watch. I am not usually a big fan of Clooney, but was really impressed with his performance, as he was effortlessly comfortable in front of the screen and glowed as his coy character. He played on the loveable aspects of Jack, which makes the film, less cynical than it could have been. It is also a great performance, which sees Clooney sparkling with wit and on top form.
One of the main reasons I liked this film so much, was that the two characters who are completely different, and who start of hating each other, actually have more in common that either one of them first thought. The conversations between the two main characters is the real thing that keeps this flick moving at a thoroughly enjoyable pace. The characters bounce of each other wonderfully, and each word, builds up the two leads relationship just that little bit more.
The script is good, especially when dealing with the character building, but slightly lags in good plotting. We are all more interesting in the two love birds than either of their side projects. I think the constant exploring into their jobs and lives away from each other was a little tiresome and unoriginal. But it does have it’s moments of brilliance though.
The soundtrack is wonderful. One Fine Day is a great song, which adds to the film, by adding a consistently memorable theme. All the songs are very suitable for a romantic comedy. It allows us to drift on into this beautiful world that the creators have made for us. It also includes Momma Said, That’s The Story of Love, Isn’t It Romantic and This Guy’s In Love with You.
The direction by Michael Hoffman is good if only average. Although the director draws good performances from the two lead actors, he lets the plot lose it’s tightness towards the end, when he desperately tries to keep us guessing whether the couple will get together. He obviously has vision, but he doesn’t do anything spectacular.
I enjoyed One Fine Day immensely, two brilliant lead actors, an occasionally sparkling script, and great production values make this a great film, even if it is a little forgettable.
I would recommend this.
You Can Buy This Flick From:
Tesco Entertainment £11.99 HMV.co.uk £9.99 The Hut £11.49 Bensons World £10.49
You can Buy the Soundtrack From:
101cd.com £14.92 Store 4 CDs £15.95
Thank you all for reading and hopefully rating. Best Wishes, as always : ) JAy
Pictures of One Fine Day (DVD)
Soundtrack Cover
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Production Year: 1998 - Drama - Director: Martin Brest - Original Language: English - Classification: 12 years and over - Starring: Brad Pitt, Anthony Hopkins, Marcia Gay Harden, Jake Weber, Claire Forlani, Jeffrey Tambor
Production Year: 2004 - Drama - Director: Nick Cassavetes - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over, 12 years and over - Starring: Rachel McAdams, Ryan Gosling, Gena Rowlands
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might have been made by a talented contract director, perhaps featuring Don Ameche and Claudette Colbert. But in factOne Fine Daystars George Clooney as an inves...
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![One Fine Day [1997] [DVD]](http://picnica.ciao.com/uk/78519928.jpg "One Fine Day [1997] [DVD]")
Jan 30th, 2005
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