Don't Go Breaking My Heart (1999)

Must See Movie...

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

This is a very funny romantic comedy which works because Jenny Seagrove musters her whimsicality and shows that she is an excellent comedienne with perfect comic timing. She plays a widow whose husband has died 18 months earlier unexpectedly of a heart attack, leaving her and her children bereft and bewildered. She is a very attractive woman, and her lecherous dentist, played by Charles Dance, has designs upon her. Instead of injections, he uses hypnosis on his dental patients. In Seagrove's case, he goes beyond dentistry and while she is 'under' he makes increasingly naughty suggestions to her to assist him in his dastardly plans to seduce her and marry her. Anyone who does not believe that things like this can happen has only to read the book OPEN TO SUGGESTION, where many cases of such abuses are described. But back to the film. This hypnotic manipulation has some comic moments. At one point, while Seagrove is in the dental chair in a state of trance and Dance is called out suddenly, leaving the radio on, she accepts hypnotic instructions from a radio announcer, with comic consequences. Seagrove has mastered a wonderfully 'dipsy' expression which makes her hypnotically motivated adventures come across as hilarious. The man who is in love with her is played by an American actor named Anthony Edwards, who had just appeared in a successful American comedy called PLAYING BY HEART (1998). This light and enjoyable confection was directed by Willi Patterson, a TV drama director who had directed Charles Dance 11 years earlier in a TV movie spy drama, OUT OF THE SHADOWS (1988). For some reason, Patterson ceased being a director after this film and since 1999 has done nothing else in the film or TV business which is recorded on IMDb. He had a light touch which was very suited to gentle comedy, and this film works very well.

Compared with the atrocious Love Actually, this is not bad. For a change, the film focuses on the nouveau riche rather than pompous middle-class people who plaque such films as Love Actually and Notting Hill. Jenny Seagrove's character epitomises this nouveau riche world, alongside Charles Dances's pony-tailed dentist. It's the first time I have seen Charles Dance not play a upper-crust toff and it was quite a shock. Anthonhy Edwards plays the requisite American in London and it was fairly obvious what the outcome of the film would be early on. There are a few funny lines of dialogue and some scenes are quite touching. Jenny Seagrove does a good job but isn't stretched by the limitations of the script. Charles Dance is underused but manages to steal some scenes from the rather bland character Anthony Edwards plays. Not bad for a British romcom.

Last night I had a flashback -- to a scene in a film in which a woman was hypnotised into liking "the Beach Boys" -- only it went horribly wrong and she ended up loving "the Bitch Boys". For some reason, I couldn't remember the name of this film, or anything else about it. In the end, I had to call up a friend, and he couldn't remember either. After half an hour of searching IMDB, we found this.The reason, my friends, why neither of us could remember what this film was called was because it was so dire that we had erased it from our collective minds: utterly trite, poorly directed low-budget chick flick rubbish, this film set an all time low in the 'romantic comedy' genre -- and I've seen "You've got Mail" AND "She's all that".In fact, if memory serves me correctly, it was the same girl who dragged myself and my friends along to see these aforementioned films as well, and my only advice to you as a reader of this review is to stay away from this utter stinker of a romantic comedy, unless you're a teenage girl with completely stereotypical delusions about 'ideal' relationships. Having an IQ of below 50 would probably also help, after all, it's the only way you're not going to see this ending coming.On a brighter note, I also remembered how I got that scar on my left arm -- I remember now that this film was so dire the only way I avoided an excruciating death by boredom was chewing into my own arm for something interesting to do. Avoid this one: it's that bad, folks.

There is nothing here which challenged the brain, and it is not an earthshattering 'must-see' flick, but it was very enjoyable, with a very watchable story with actors who are well chosen for their roles (it was great to see Suggs). I must add that the story is also very predictable - but it is the type of film where that doesn't matter.I just enjoyed it - it was as simple as that.