Quick Review: Ricki Lake is no Sandra Bullock, and that's too bad for this film. The plot is based on the novel, I MARRIED A DEAD MAN, and it was in the works for a long time--so long, in fact, that another movie with a similar theme, WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING, got made and turned Ms. Bullock into a star. It's not that Ricki is that bad (she was an actress before she became a trash talk show host, and it shows); it's just that she doesn't have Sandra's sparkle and charisma, and that's what her part needs. After all, if you're going to be an unwed mother who is in a train wreck and mistaken for the widow of a rich young man who dies in the wreck AND you then continue to pose as her with the young man's mother and his twin brother, you had BETTER have a LOT of charm. Ricki simply doesn't compare to Sandra Bullock in that department. That's the bad news. The good news is that both Shirley MacLaine as the mother and Brendan Fraser as the brother are excellent--with MacLaine allowing some of her famous charm to show again after a string of films with her as a curmudgeon and Fraser nicely walking the line between attitude and eligibility. Throw in a neat secondary part with Miguel Sandoval as the gay surrogate father to Fraser, and you at least have the warmth that the plot demands. It's not what it could have been, but it's a pleasant enough romantic comedy.
Excerpts from an interview with Shirley MacLaine.