… ‘cos I may as well run with a theme. I held off watching this one last year when I was having quite the Tatum O’Neal feast while reading her autobiography because she hasn’t made a whole lot of movies and I felt like I had to save something. Though this movie sounded tacky as anything and the cheesily soft romantic opening credits did nothing to change the expectation, you kinda can’t go wrong by me if you put her and Richard Burton on screen for 90 minutes.

At least, that’s what I thought. Though initially this partnership works as expected – their first conversation in the restaurant, for instance – sadly, as this particular 90 minutes goes on, it gets more and more tiresome and unconvincing. It’s like the film makers started with a perfect pairing but are dead set on finding the sourness that just isn’t there in the actors’ chemistry. There’s a double climax sequence where first Tatum strips for Burton, and he tells her to “Get Dressed!” several times, unfortunately with a more age-appropriate suitor of hers (played by Michael Wincott of all people) peeking through the door; she flees and encounters him in a corn field of all places … “You’ll undress for anyone but me!” he declares, and then proceeds to try and rape her. It really shouldn’t be funny, but it’s such a laughable progression of incidence that it’s hard to stifle a titter. The rest of the movie flows predictably moralising the whys of why relationships like this could nevah!, evah! work.

Tags: art, cheese, cuties, Lolita, rape, romance

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