Sarah and I started An Affair to Remember around Valentine's Day and we just finished it recently. That should be a clear indication that it's not exactly riveting, which is interesting because the plot is straightforward and doesn't meander at all: playboy meets girl on boat, they fall in love, they break up with their respective s.o.'s, some obstacle gets in the way of their happiness, the obstacle is resolved. It's such a clean plot. And yet, very boring.
Maybe it's one of those cases of success breeding failure: An Affair to Remember may have been so big that we've absorbed it in different forms. It's like the problem of seeing Tolkien as just ripping off D&D and other fantasies.
The best parts of the movie were those authentically weird historical moments--Deborah Kerr gets a job as a chorus teacher and, after being thanked by a mug for helping his son not be such a mug, she leads her kids in a song about listening to your conscience. The song is punctuated by a little tap dancing from the black kids in the chorus.
(Also, there's one great moment, though it's dragged on too long, where Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr are making eyes at each other and at their s.o.'s when they dock; all we get is medium close-ups on them until we pull out and get a shot of all the other travelers watching this byplay as well. It's the most interesting sequence about who sees whom.)
Lastly, a programming note: I've got some family coming this weekend, so updating may be unreliable.
I felt similarly about Dirty Dancing.
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