Very rarely does a romantic comedy try to have much of a moral. In most of these cases, the moral becomes so important that the story ends up playing second fiddle to the message and the movie is bad.
In “The Mirror Has Two Faces,” the moral seems to take precedent over the plot of the film itself, and then, instead of a fulfilling and inspirational ending, it turns its back on the message and negates everything the movie stood for up to that point.
I figure it would be unfair to explain by giving away the end of the film, but half way through the film, the end is easily predicted.
For those of you that haven’t been inundated with trailers and television ads for the last month, I’ll provide an idea of the storyline.
Jeff Bridges plays Greg Larkin, a math professor at Columbia, who is developed as a boring teacher, the author of a boring book, and generally a boring guy. He is sick and tired of relationships being ruined by sex, so he tries to start one that won’t have anything to do with romance.
To find the ideal mate for such a match, he takes out an ad. In this ad, he asks that the respondent have a P.H.d., but that “appearance is not important.” Who does the search turn up but Rose Morgan, played by Barbra Streisand.
Rose and Greg hit it off immediately, as best friends, that is. Greg thinks he has reached perfection - an intelligent, funny woman who not only likes him but understands his obscure math theorems, but Rose isn’t quite so happy.
At first, she seems happy with the relationship, but after her best friend, sister, and mother find out the love life she is living, they not only question its merits but make her do the same. She starts to expect more out of the relationship than Greg is ready to give, and everything goes wrong.
To say that this film wasn’t romantic would be untrue, as would saying that the film wasn’t funny. So, one must ask, why didn’t it work?
The concept behind the majority of the movie - that a relationship can not only work without sex but be better because of it - is a good idea. It is even fairly original. But then it is forgotten. For one character to have such a strong belief in an idea and then forget it for the sake of the romance he is trying to avoid is about the worst thing a movie can do.
Anyway, Barbra Streisand, all throughout the movie, looks way too good for her part. Rose Morgan is supposed to be an unattractive middle-aged woman who can’t get a date. True, she may be no Cindy Crawford, but she is miscast nonetheless.
If you are the kind of moviegoer that forgets about a film as soon as you walk out of the theater, you may just like “The Mirror Has Two Faces.” If you reflect on films at all, or like morals when they mean something, this movie might just make you as sick as it made me.
Grade: C-