(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon.)
Nick Rawlings, airline pilot, played with a clean-shaven smile and mindless amorality by Jack Wagner, has his bigamous lifestyle crash just as he weds wife number three, the youngest and blondest of the trio (Nicole Eggert). Somehow he was able to fool wife number one (Shelly Hack) for sixteen years, and wife number two (Joan Severance) for three years before they got wise. Neither wife seemed quite that dumb, but this is Hollywood. In reality these women wanted to be fooled of course, or didn't give a damn; but it makes a diverting story this way with wife number one only catching on after she finds a receipt in the trunk of his car for a nine thousand dollar ring that he does NOT give to her for their anniversary. When she discovers that it's an engagement ring for someone else, she hires a PI, cancels all his credit cars, sells his car, etc.
It's kind of fun to watch it all play out even if the characters are pure surface. The real problem (aside from Jack Wagner who has all the charm of a snake; but perhaps that's intentional) is the ending. How to sew it up and make the audience feel they've experienced the travails of bigamy? Turns out that real engagement with the subject was not even considered. Perhaps to the credit of director Alan Metzger it can be said he didn't even try. How horrible it would have been had he manufactured some phony catharsis and half baked it with some sort of deep philosophy. Instead Metzger had the cast walk through the production like it was a high school play: say your lines, look pretty, wear your costume and take a bow. For the audience it was kind of like cotton candy when what you really want is a steak.
Still this movie did demonstrate beyond any shadow of a doubt that one man is not enough for three women. However, that's a "duh."
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