Pyromaniac Love Story

This was an attempt toward a romantic comedy, and one which did not work. Although the film was cast in an interesting manner, the dismal script betrayed the best efforts of all. The director's fey mannerisms may have succeeded if he had adopted a point of view. It was embarrassing to watch William Baldwin and, in particular, Armin Muller-Stahl.

I recently thought of this film due to the hype of the fire in the tv show This Is Us. I was on set of this movie during filming many times and it was very eye opening to see how the fire segments were filmed. In the movie it really looked like building were on fire but the real fire was actually quite a far distance away but merged into what really appeared as fire coming out of the windows etc. But ... I digress.

The movie was soooo very bad and most of the actors knew it and just went about full filling their contract to do it. One actor who tried to get out of his contract but couldnt was able to get his name taken off the movie and even though he is there in a few key scenes .... he is not mentioned anywhere. A few years later when someone brought the film up he said he was never in the movie .... the other person was arguing with him "he was in it" .... Richard Crenna stood firm and said he was not in that movie. I was off to the side and just laughed. His name in no where associated with this movie.

This movie is exeptionally entertaining. It doesn't try to be anything more than it is, which is some thing in the romantic comedy vein. And don't take that to mean the movie is your typical Sandra Bullock chick flick. As a guy i am entirely enthralled by this flick. This is largely because of the cast. Billy Baldwin is definitly my favorite in this one. He's great at portraying a complete flake against John Leguizamo's straight man. The plot works great for me, with Baldwins odd behavior providing much of the thrust. I love the great Old New York feel the film has, which largely comes from the bakery and Sergio. In short i really love everything about this movie. Go watch it. Its on TV often enough, and a DVD recently popped up.

Not having any idea what this film was about, but based on the fact that John Leguizamo was appearing in it, we decided to watch it. Well, it turned out not to be the wisest decision. In fact, as another commentary in this forum puts it, we felt embarrassed for the actors that participated in this movie.

While the film is by no means horrible, it doesn't make sense at all. The over the top performance by William Baldwin doesn't help the situation either. John Leguizamo is a multi-talented actor who deserved better. The basic problem it seems to be the film was a project that started with good intentions in making a little comedy and the people in charge ran out of ideas along the way. The result is an uneven film.

I caught the film as a lark while looking for movies under 100 minutes. This is a nice little contemporary fairy tale about love. There is an artificial quality to the performances which I think is intentional, but that's offset humor in the script and an artful score. If you liked "Moonstruck" check this out.