The team of writer/producer Nancy Meyers and co-writer/director Charles Shyer (“Private Benjamin,” “Father of the Bride”) has put together an anthology of genre moves that takes no risks and scores no surprises. We know that Nolte and Roberts are going to pretend mutual unattraction. We know that they’re going to try to outmaneuver each other. All we ask is that our foreknowledge be fulfilled with style, wit and goose bumps.
Only the goose bumps come through in reasonable numbers – when, for example, Nolte and Roberts are trapped in an elevator shaft, scrambling up cables as the elevator pursues them. Unfortunately, the convoluted story produces the opposite of goose bumps, sort of goose depressions. And the bad guys have less personality than the elevator cables.
Most serious is the failure of the Shyer-Meyers team to get the most out of their stars. Instead of the crackling repartee of a “His Girl Friday,” we get stock exchanges, updated now and then by the new sexual frankness, as when Roberts outmachos Nolte. Nolte (referring to a bulldog he’s sent to Roberts): “Does he remind you of me?” Roberts: “Yeah, I’ve grown awfully fond of little Dick.” Nolte and Roberts are greatly appealing presences; the movie’s mistake is to swaddle them in niceness, especially Roberts. After her two-year sabbatical, she’s returned in two unremarkable films, “The Pelican Brief” and this one. Roberts is the anti-Sharon Stone; one uncrosses her legs, the other doesn’t. But at 26, Roberts needs roles with some edge and grit. Maybe we’ll see some of that in Robert Altman’s upcoming “Pret-a-Porter.” If anyone can de-nice Roberts, it’s Altman.
