July 29th, 1994

IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU. But most likely it wouldn’t. This is the loosely-jumping-off-from-a-real-incident story of the NYPD’s most lovable officer Charlie Lang (Nicolas Cage, DEADFALL) coming up short for a tip at the diner, offering waitress Yvonne Biasi (Bridget Fonda, last seen in LITTLE BUDDHA) half of his Lotto ticket if he wins, then staying true to his word when he wins $2 million. They become a media sensation, there is romance, as well as “a scene of cop action” according to the current version of the MPAA’s PG rating.

Charlie has no dark side, he’s just a great guy who’s friends with all the people in the neighborhood, doesn’t seem to harass anybody on the job, does at one point foil an armed robbery while shopping. He’s very close with his partner Bo Williams (Wendell Pierce, A RAGE IN HARLEM), but his other best friend seems to be Jesu (Victor Rojas, later “Kid #2” in DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE), a neighbor kid he plays stickball with. His wife Muriel (Rosie Perez, NIGHT ON EARTH) is a vain and materialistic beautician who always yells at him in that Rosie Perez way. He doesn’t seem to mind, and Jesu says he’s “whipped.”

Yvonne is much less happy in life. Shortly before meeting Charlie she had to declare bankruptcy because her estranged husband Eddie (Stanley Tucci, MONKEY SHINES) ran off and ran up her credit cards. Her boss Sal (J.E. Freeman, ACES: IRON EAGLE III) is an open asshole who berates her in front of customers. For her part she’s extremely rude to Charlie, but at least apologizes the next day (before learning about the money).

Muriel is a very broad character who obviously doesn’t want Charlie to split their money with a stranger, but is convinced to do it by being told that people will call her “the lady with the heart of gold.” She keeps saying that on camera, but when reporters hear about this splitting the prize with a waitress story they focus on that. One thing this movie requires you to accept is that there are like 15-20 TV news reporters in New York City who will treat a cute Lotto story as the fucking OJ trial for months on end.

Part of the fantasy is marveling at how down to earth and kind these newly rich people can be. Charlie and Yvonne have a hard time getting used to spending money on themselves, while Muriel makes Charlie bring her shopping and buys a fur coat. Unfortunately for her she chooses a store with anti-fur protesters out front, so she immediately gets splattered with red paint (by the future star of Bones, Emily Deschanel in her first screen appearance).

Yvonne does not run afoul of animal rights activists, but instead buys the diner she works at, waitresses for the joy of it, and establishes a table named after Charlie where homeless people can eat for free. Also they start hanging out, going rollerblading, etc., and it’s obvious this married man is going to fall for this nice lady, so to make it palatable we notice Muriel hitting it off with a rich investor guy she meets (Seymour Cassel, MOBSTERS).

Muriel assumes Charlie is cheating with Yvonne, kicks him out and demands all the money. He’s a saint or a monk or whatever so he doesn’t mind giving up his, but refuses to take back Yvonne’s, so she sues them for it. Charlie and Yvonne actually do hook up when they both have to leave their spouses, finally decide to splurge and both end up at the Plaza Hotel. Charlie was originally planning to go to the Holiday Inn until Jesu scolded him for it. We have that stickball friend who reminds+ us to treat ourselves well.

One strange touch is that at the beginning the story is being narrated by Isaac Hayes (TRUCK TURNER), who mentions that his name is Angel, and then is seen at various times throughout the movie standing nearby and watching Charlie. I took him to be a guardian angel, in the tradition of Bruce Willis in NORTH, but eventually we see where he comes into the story and he might really just be a normal living human named Angel Dupree.

Although there are some signs of interest in theatrical romantic comedies, it’s another genre that has primarily moved to television these days. The Hallmark Channel famously puts out around 40 Christmas romcoms every year, and they also do similar movies designed for Valentine’s Day, the summer, the fall, pre-holiday winter, maybe others. Those movies have some of the same tropes as IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU, but they don’t have (with all due respect) talent like Cage and Fonda, or cinematography by Caleb Deschanel (MORE AMERICAN GRAFFITI, THE RIGHT STUFF), or especially scenes shot on location in New York City. Or even in the United States. This one also has Barry Malkin, editor of THE GODFATHER PART II and several other Francis Ford Coppola films. So from a craft standpoint it’s what I like to call “a real movie.”

But not a great one. I think making Muriel such a shallow and hateful character loads the deck too much, makes it too hard to swallow. Maybe it would be more interesting if she was a normal person with reasonable concerns about her husband giving a million dollars to a woman he just met. But that’s not the kind of story they wanted to tell. They wanted a heartwarming story where Cage and Fonda play humble sweethearts being slowly, bashfully pushed together by fate, and there’s admittedly some appeal in that.

The screenplay is by Jane Anderson, a writer from The Facts of Life and The Wonder Years who had graduated to feature length with the acclaimed 1993 made-for-cable movie THE POSITIVELY TRUE ADVENTURES OF THE ALLEGED TEXAS CHEERLEADER-MURDERING MOM, directed by Michael Ritchie. She wrote it as COP GIVES WAITRESS MILLION DOLLAR TIP, inspired by a real story where they were already friends and had discussed getting a ticket together, but she didn’t remember and he split it with her anyway. They did not leave their spouses for each other. I think there’s something kind of corny about how the idea came from a fluffy newspaper story and then fluffy newspaper stories become a big part of the plot, but I guess corniness is not a big concern in movies like this.

IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU is the fourth film directed by Andrew Bergman, writer of BLAZING SADDLES and FLETCH, who had last directed HONEYMOON IN VEGAS, which also had Cage and Cassel and romance. That one ended in skydiving and marriage, this one with marriage and a hot air balloon. Director trademark, I guess.

signs of the times: Muriel watches Designing Women. When Charlie spends the night at Bo’s house he sleeps with his daughter’s Barney blanket. Bo makes a joke about getting Knicks tickets on the floor with Jack Nicholson and Spike Lee. Actually that’s still a current reference I think, but here it’s in the same summer where Lee made a movie about his childhood obsession with the Knicks.

I also watched BLACK BEAUTY, a G-rated Warner Brothers movie released on the same day. It was the directorial debut of novelist turned screenwriter Caroline Thompson, her followup to writing the 1993 version of THE SECRET GARDEN. This one is of course based on the 1877 novel by Anna Sewell, which had already been adapted into several movies, TV shows, and animated specials. It had originally been written to warn adults about animal cruelty, but this movie seems more in line with its later reputation as an old timey children’s story.

The horse is anthropomorphized in the sense that he narrates the movie in the voice of Alan Cumming (BERNARD AND THE GENIE). But he’s just a horse, he doesn’t talk like Mr. Ed, or smile like SPIRIT: STALLION OF THE CIMARRON. And he’s not as philosophical as the seagull narrating JONATHAN LIVINGSTON SEAGULL. He just tells the story of his life and even remembers being born. Sean Bean (PATRIOT GAMES) is the farmer who delivers him, and I was immediately surprised by what appears to be footage of an actual baby horse being born. I’m gonna assume they didn’t really have Sean Bean on the scene, but they had somebody wearing his jacket pulling that slimy little guy out of there!? That’s an impressive effort.

Maybe if this had been made after BABE they would’ve had more puppets or digital effects. Or maybe they did and I just couldn’t tell. It seems to me they really took a bunch of footage of this baby horse learning to stand and then running around in the sunny fields with his mommy and shit. And there’s lots of footage of various insects and other animals like rabbits and frogs. It starts to feel like one of those old Disney nature documentaries they used to show us in elementary school. I was not all that moved by it, but if you’re gonna build a movie around stock footage and overbearing music it might as well be Danny Elfman.

Of course the baby horse grows into Black Beauty, portrayed by Docs Keepin Time, an it-horse of the moment since he had also starred in the TV show The Adventures of the Black Stallion. His son Keepin Charge later co-starred with Viggo Mortensen and Ed Harris in APPALOOSA. Like WAR HORSE, Black Beauty is a horse who various humans become strangely enamored of. Also he falls in love with a lighter colored mare named Ginger. Sometimes in movies you gotta put up with a protagonist who’s head over heels with a female character who we really know nothing about except how beautiful she is. This is that only we just have to take his word for it about horse beauty standards.

I was hoping I might enjoy this somewhat since Thompson is the writer of EDWARD SCISSORHANDS, THE ADDAMS FAMILY and THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS. But I guess without gothic castles and mad scientists I’m not as into her stuff. She doesn’t show the humor or visual panache of the directors she’s written for, or maybe this is just what a G-rated period horse literature joint is supposed to look like. I’m no Ken from BARBIE, I just don’t have the thing that makes you interested in horses. I’m sorry he had to pull a buggy and that he has such an accepting attitude about it, but I don’t know how to become invested in that. There’s really nothing for me to latch onto in this movie, that’s why I had to piggyback it on a review of another movie. I can’t fairly judge this except to say it bored the shit out of me.

BLACK BEAUTY got decent reviews, and some kid somewhere probly liked it, I hope. But it was a flop, opening in 10th place, with IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU in 6th (but it eventually did okay). The surprise hit that week was THE MASK, which I won’t be revisiting because I said enough five years ago. I think it’s kind of interesting but dated in both style and in its themes being uncomfortably incel-adjacent. Sorry. I’m sure I’ll watch it again before either of these, though.