My Myself I (2000)

Rachel Griffiths plays a lonely single woman who wonders what her life would have been life if she had married a guy named Robert. While crossing the street, she is nearly run over by a woman. When she awakes, she sees that the woman standing over her is her - the alternate version of her who DID marry Robert. They change places briefly, and emerge both the wiser and happier.

This pause provided so you can retch.

I carped that Map of the World did a heavy handed job on some important and gripping themes. This film is the opposite - it does a pretty good job on a really, really trite and cliched premise. I expected to hate every minute of this movie, but I didn't. Oh, mind you, the ending was dumb.The ending is everything promised by the weak premise.

So you can think of the film as a trip to Key West - even though the destination might be disappointing, the ride there isn't bad at all.

Rachel Griffiths is a talented actress. This particular movie is a comedy, but she's done some serious work in the past, notably as the less talented but more loveable sister in "Hilary and Jackie". Here's she's a big rawboned rubbery-faced woman with a broad comic style. She's Carol Burnett with an Aussie accent, and she is able to get some empathy for her character without resorting to any Chaplainesque tricks. She draws it out of reality. Basically, she's a good actress doing comedy rather than a comedienne doing schtick.

Of course, she had to carry the entire comedy, and that's a lot to ask from one person not named Groucho.

But I guess the bottom line is that I actually watched the movie, despite the fact that I hated the premise and fully expected to hate the entire film, soI have to give the director and the performers a lot of credit for making it palatable.

Nudity review: Griffiths has a really big chest, but she didn't show it. On the other hand, she DID show her bottom.

Box office: A domestic USA dud, despite decent reviews and good audience reactions. $565 thousand. Never made it to more than 59 screens.

IMDB summary: 7.1 out of 10.

General consensus: about three stars. Lots of people loved it. Apollo scored it 82, and Apollo users scored it 86. Ebert gave it three stars. Berardinelli gave it two and a half. Interestingly, Berardinelli disagreed with me 100%. He felt it constituted poor development of a promising idea.

DVD info from Amazon. No special features worth noting.