The Simian Line (2000) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)

The Simian Line is an old-fashioned feel-good romantic comedy involving three couples, a psychic, and two ghosts who can only be seen by the psychic.

The three couples live in two neighboring houses in New Jersey, just across the river from The City. Anchoring the cast is Lynn Redgrave, whose family has owned one of the houses for generations. She lives with a much younger man, and rents out additional rooms to a second couple, who look barely old enough to have reached puberty. The third couple consists of a pair of yuppies who have moved in next door. The two established couples throw a housewarming party for the newcomers, and they also invite a psychic to liven up the proceedings. They expect this to provide some harmless fun, and it does for a while, but the vibes turn bad when the psychic, who has some real gifts, sees the ghosts who haunt the house. This immediately prompts all six inebriated party-goers to declare her as buggy as Quebec in summertime. Offended by their rudeness, the psychic makes the cruel prediction that one of the couples in the room will break up before the end of the year.

The three couples assume that the prediction is just the rambling of a loony, but the very next day they are struck by the fact that another of the psychic's predictions has come true - and it was something very specific which nobody could possibly have guessed. Lynn Redgrave becomes even more convinced of supernatural influences when the psychic comes back to the house and makes some astoundingly accurate statements about Redgrave's family. None of this seems surprising to the psychic, since she got the info directly from one of the ghosts, who is Redgraves's great-grandfather. Now you can see the predicament Redgraves is in. She knows that one of the couples will break up. She can see that the other couples are matched well, and seem happy. She, meanwhile, is a 60ish woman trying to hang on to hunky Harry Connick Jr. It's obvious to her that the handwriting is on her wall. Of course, she then starts to misinterpret every word and every action of Connick as a sign of infidelity or boredom, and this makes him understandably upset, since he's genuinely in love with her, and is as happy as an English lord with a new derby. The resulting tension causes her to make the prophecy self-fulfilling. Similar things happen to the other two couples as well.

Now I can't really tell you much more except that the prediction was 100% accurate and, despite that, the film has a sweet (well, bittersweet) ending.

The Simian Line was shot in twelve days with very little money by an inexperienced director, so it is somewhat marred by technical glitches which were the result of that writer/director lacking experience, time and money. The worst of these amateur mistakes involves pointless narration which not only seems unnecessary, but co-exists with dialogue. It seems to have been added in post-production to an already completed film, with the dialogue track simply reduced in volume as the narrator recites. The worst script problem resides in the fact that I was only interested in the film in three situations: (1) when the Connick and Redgrave story was developed (2) when the ghosts were around (3) when Cindy Crawford was naked. The stories behind the other two couples were ... well, tedious, frankly.

So, in spite of that, is it worth a look? Surprisingly, yes. Oh, the DVD is absolutely bare-bones, and you have to like this kind of syrupy story with a syrupy score, but it's OK. It's a chick-flick or a date movie, and appeals most strongly to the pre-teens and young teens, but the people who love such movies should know that this will probably fill the bill. It is a sweet and gentle movie with a big heart and some brains as well.

The few critics who saw it generally disliked it (12% positive reviews), but I can understand that. It's not the kind of cynical, deep, and/or hip movie that critics like. Variety gave it a fairly positive review with which I generally agree. It's scored a respectable 6.0 at IMDb, which seems perfectly reasonable to me. I felt that the elements I liked made it a satisfactory watch, even though it is not my kind of movie.

Just as surprising as the watchability of the film is the fact that Harry Connick (as the toy boy) and Cindy Crawford (as one of the yuppies) manage to hold their own among such distinguished actors as Lynn Redgrave and William Hurt (as a genteel Southern ghost). It's a shame for Cindy that nobody has seen this film, because it would have given her a chance to cleanse the palettes of a lot of people whose taste for her was soured by Fair Game. I, for one, will stop using her as a punch line for bad acting jokes.

At least for today.