Flick of The Day: Only You

This is a very old school film. It harks back to a time of simpler fare, the kind of light romantic comedy that would have populated the cinemas on a weekly basis until the 1960s. This is perhaps most evident by the presence of director Norman Jewison, 84 years young who started off in television in the 1950s before making the leap into feature films, making some very fine films such as In The Heat Of The Night and And Justice For All while blazing new ground in terms of bringing taboo issues to the silver screen.

Only You

This however is not one of these films. As I said, its a trifle, an entertainment, something which will be forgotten as soon as its over. The story is a simple one. Fate (Marisa Tomei) is an English teacher obsessed with faith and destiny, and searching for the soul mate she discovered on a ouija board aged 11, Damon Bradley. So far, so barely plausible. Things take a turn for the worse, when she picks up a phone message, a week before her wedding from a Damon Bradley who is holidaying in Italy. So Fate and her put upon sister, the lovely Bonnie Hunt set off to Italy in search of the mythic Damon, visiting Venice, Rome and Positano while picking up Robert Downey Jr along the way. 

Of course, the real star is the beautiful Italian scenery from the Venetian canals to the Tuscan countryside. Jewison shoots the film with an eye for the spectacular, producing the best ad the Italian Tourist Board never commissioned. That said, there is much to enjoy. Downey Jr is charming in an off kilter sort of way and Tomei  is excellent coming off a trio of career highlights in My Cousin Vinny, Chaplin and The Paper. The plot may be deeply implausible, asking us to suspend our disbelief at times to the point of incredulity but it has a good heart, is well acted and finishes well which is more then can be said for so many pictures of this oeuvre.

While not a patch on Jewison's previous foray into rom-com territory, the enjoyable Moonstruck, this is a decent film and worth your time on an otherwise empty day if only to get you thinking about booking that Roman Holiday.