Only You (1994)
7/10
Only You
27 October 2011
Warning: Spoilers
From director Norman Jewison (In the Heat of the Night, The Thomas Crown Affair, Fiddler on the Roof, Moonstruck), I spotted this pretty much out of nowhere and noticed the two leading stars, so I just to give it a try. Basically when she was a child Faith Corvatch (Marisa Tomei) used a Ouija Board that spelled out, in individual letters, the name "Damon Bradley", and this is supposedly the name of her soul mate. Now grown up she goes to a carnival and has a fortune teller using her Crystal Ball sees this name as well as the man she will marry, and then, on the verge of getting married, she overhears a phone call from her future husband's friend, it is Damon Bradley calling from Venice, Italy. Faith is determined to track him down, so she and her sister in law Kate (Jumanji's Bonnie Hunt) travel from New York to the Italian countryside and streets of Rome in search of the man they only know by name. They are following his trail with any information people can give from his last known whereabouts, but they seem to keep missing him by small amounts of time, even once by seconds and inches. Then Faith meets a young American man (Robert Downey Jr.), but has no interest in him until he hears the name and identifies himself as Damon Bradley, and after a spending a night together they have both fallen hopelessly in love. It only falls apart when he confesses that he is not Damon Bradley, his real name is Peter Wright, and she angrily walks out wanting to go home, but Kate finding attraction for her from Giovanni (Joaquim De Almeida) the Italian businessman might make that difficult. Peter comes back to her though and says that he has been looking for a Damon Bradley, and found out he has apparently moved to Positano, so Giovanni drives Peter, Faith and Kate there to find her at a posh hotel. Then they find this "Damon Bradley" (Billy Zane), a playboy with long hair and many women lapping him up, and confident she should try and see how things go she invites him to go. Of course it turns out this "Damon" is actually Peter's friend Harry and the whole thing was staged, and meanwhile Kate's husband Larry (Fisher Stevens) has travelled to find them and make up with his wife, but they planned to come home now anyway. Larry reveals to Faith that when he did the Ouiji board as a child and spelled the name out, it was all a prank, and he paid the fortune teller too, he didn't tell her because he was worried she would never talk to him again. Getting to the airport Peter is there to see off Faith, and they both overhear a real Damon Bradley (Adam LeFevre) at the information desk, so they can truly meet him, he is a reasonably good looking man, Peter explains the whole situation to him and he is perplexed, and of course he mentions being in love with her. In the end this Damon asks Faith if she loves Peter, and that if she truly does then she should embrace it, and she manages to catch him on his plane to Boston in time, and they kiss, with all the other passengers applauding, and they fly off into the sunset. Also starring John Benjamin Hickey as Dwayne and Men in Black's Siobhan Fallon as Leslie. Tomei is obviously attractive and she is also charming as the woman searching for the supposed man she has a destiny with, and Downey Jr. is likable as the man she actually should be with, their scenes together are great, and the supporting cast, including sleazy Zane works well too, I can see what the critics mean by a Cinderella style story, it certainly has that quality, and it makes you laugh in the right places, a good fun romantic comedy. Very good!
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