Only You

Alice Roosevelt Longworth once opined at a dinner party: “If you don’t have anything nice to say about anybody, then sit next to me.” This could be the official motto of film critics, since we make our living by slashing everything in sight. It’s a dubious excuse for employment, but somebody has to whine about these lousy movies. Why should the public have to wade through this mire when a lucky few can do it for them? (Besides, we critics are gluttons for punishment.)

If Only You could inspire me to this curious train of thought, just imagine what it could do to the average movie-goer. Sure, I know what you’re thinking: “How bad could it be?” After all, Robert Downey, Jr. and Maria Tomei are good performers for a romantic comedy. And Norman Jewison is an okay director whose movies usually deliver a certain amount of style. Besides, he was the guy who did Moonstruck, a potentially wooden bedroom farce that came off like a silvery gleam of whimsical wit. With this lineup, Only You should have scored a direct hit at both the heart and the funny bone.

Instead, it simply shoots itself in the foot. Only You is meant to be a sweet-faced tale about true love and mismatched destiny, but it unfolds as a slow ride on a bad date. You can’t wait for the evening to end, while hoping that you can get by with a quick handshake and a curt goodnight at your door.

Tomei plays Faith (get the symbolism?), a starry-eyed lit. teacher who oozes the spirit of romanticism to her high-school students. She’s a strong believer in fate and is convinced that a Ouija board is on the level when it tells her that she’s destined to fall in love with a man named Damon Bradley. Her long wait for Bradley, however, doesn’t initially interfere with her intended nuptials to a podiatrist. Until a garbled phone message sends her hot-footing it to Italy in search of Mr. Right, that is.

What she finds is Downey, a purchaser for an American shoe company (don’t ask me about this movie’s foot fetish theme) who claims to be Bradley. He’s lying, but only because he’s fallen instantly in love with Tomei and will do almost anything to woo her. He also thinks that she’s a space cadet and that his deception is, therefore, justified. When she discovers the truth, she becomes convinced that he’s a deceitful jerk and will have nothing to do with him. Guess what? They’re both right. Why can’t the movie just end there?

Unfortunately, it continues for at least another hour, and it doesn’t get any better. While its Italian landscapes are pretty as a postcard, the rest of Only You rings with the false sincerity of a tax accountant in April.

Besides, any movie that plays “Some Enchanted Evening” as many times as this sucker does deserves to be drawn and quartered.