Les fantasmes de Kathy

There's a lot to overlook here to try and get some enjoyment out of this, but it is possible. Attractive talented cast with one exception-Pullman's friend and colleague. McGovern is cute a a button as always as was her female co-star. Believable scenarios handled in sometimes clumsy ways but never strays into outright ludicrousness. Comes close though! If you can get past the first hour you'll probably reach the end. Dialogue is clever and relatable. Of course there's a small amount of PC virtue signaling that movies can never seem to avoid no matter the era produced. Can't quite give a 7 but 6 seems fair for a watchable but not memorable comedy. A one view movie, nothing special.

I feel this film is actually a lot better than its rating here suggests. At times it can be very hard to like the Kathy character, because of her silliness of focusing on ridiculous and very selfish ideas/things. But it's a comedy, so don't get overly worked up about it and just go with it, and you'll probably be quite glad you did by the end. Overall the film does have a number of very funny moments and many very strong performances. I can see how some may just get fed up with the film and write it off sort of speak, mainly because of the Kathy character and some of her decisions. But just hang with it for a bit, as the film works out pretty well after all is said and done. Larry Miller, Bill Pullman, Brad Pitt, Harley Jane Kozak, Elizabeth McGovern and Ken Wahl all do a great job with the roles they have here. It's a great cast that does have a lot of chemistry. I'm betting they had some good fun making this. The film definitely flirts with disaster at times in terms of the story; But by the end, it mostly works out to be a really fun flick with some very funny moments, and some very relatable heartfelt moments here and there too.

6.5/10.

Kathy (Harley Jane Kozak) is married to Peter (Pullman) with two kids. However she fantasizes over a college boyfriend. As a favour her friend Emily (Elizabeth McGovern) looks him up on a trip to Denver and comes back with tales of this powerful, beautiful man. This immediately causes a rift between them which is resolved when Emily falls pregnant to steady lover Elliot (Brad Pitt). At this point the plot of college boyfriends takes a sideline to the plot of Emily's pregnancy.

This starts off as a curiosity with it being funny to see stars like Brad Pitt and Bill Pullman in a less than starry production. However it is quite amusing for the most. The main problem with this is that it doesn't seem to want to settle on one plot - there's the Kathy fantasy, the Emily pregnancy, the Emily/Tom affair, the Kathy/Peter marriage, the Peter/Joe suspecting affair piece. There's so much going on that it gets a little disjoined and it's difficult to follow one cohesive story. Sure there's links between them all but it still makes for a film with no clear direction.

The story is the main weakness, as everything else is pretty good. The performances are all touched with a sense of fun that adds to the comic atmosphere of the film. However once all the storylines come in it's difficult to keep that element, especially near the end where the stories begin to come together and a lot of the resolutions begin to come together due to coincidence as much as anything else.

It's also difficult to believe that Emily wouldn't jump at the chance of being with Brad Pitt, or that Pullman would get so confused over the situation, never mind the fact that Kathy's dream lover looks like Billy Ray Cyrus - who would fall of that?!

What starts as an inoffensive comedy becomes overly complicated and relies on the type of solutions that would be more at home in a TV sitcom rather than a film. It's a shame because the rest is not as bad as you could have been. Oh - and it's spelt with an 'U' by the way.

Kathy is a bookkeeper in Portland, Oregon who has two children, Gina and Hannah, with her science professor husband Peter. Her 15-year high school reunion is coming up, and she can't help but wonder what life would be like with her old boyfriend Tom. Kathy's best friend Emily agrees to go to Denver, where Tom lives, and investigate what he is like. Emily comes home from Denver claiming to have had wild sex with Tom. Meanwhile, Emily's younger artist boyfriend Elliot is nice but he and Emily break up over his lack of interest in boring stuff.

Miscommunication results in a lot of laughs later. And it just happens that Elliot is going to Denver for his job. This sets up some wild situations.

This is pretty good most of the time. Some of the jokes didn't work for me. In particular, I didn't care for the women's obsession with Brad Pitt's body. I get that if it were the other way around, I would understand. But this just wasn't part of the appeal for me.

I've always like Harley Jane Kozak, from the time she was a college professor on "The Guiding Light". She always has such a pleasant personality and she's attractive, though not beautiful. She does well here.

Pitt does a good job too and is mostly pleasant.

Some of the best comedy comes during Kathy's fantasies or nightmares. Though in one case, Kathy is having neither a nightmare nor a fantasy. She is actually wearing a smoking hot dress that a hooker might wear, with a wild hairstyle. I don't really think of Kozak as sexy, and while I got the joke when her husband didn't notice when she put on a sexy nightie and behaved in an alluring way, this is just a standard joke with married couples and I was able to appreciate it without being turned on by Kozak.

There is one particularly funny scene where Kathy takes a drug not intended for her.

Even though there are kids, and a kids' birthday party, kids that age shouldn't watch this. Some of the sexual humor is quite potent.

I had a good time, mostly.

...but it wasn't great, either. An okay, light-hearted, feel-good comedy. Had a little too much TV-sitcomishness about it, and the main character lady was a little too neurotic, and her husband was a little too suspicious in a TV sitcom sort of way. But all of that was just "a little" and overall it was fun to watch. Mind you -- we caught it on cable -- I wouldn't have wanted to rent it!

I give it a B-