Forget Paris

Waiting for friends to arrive at their engagement party, Andy (Mantegna) tells Liz (Stevenson) about the bizarre romance between his pal Mickey (Crystal) and Ellen (Winger): how the airline she worked for in Paris mislaid the coffin carrying Mickey's father, and how despite this inauspicious beginning (and her rich husband) they fell in love, married and lived happily...for a while. Craig (Masur) and Lucy (Kavner) take up the story: Mickey, a basketball referee, was always on the road, and Ellen started climbing the walls of their suburban LA home. She'd given up everything for the marriage; what would Mickey give up? We've been this way before. An alternative title might be 'When Mickey Met Ellen'. Produced, directed and co-written by Crystal, the film has a generous number of acerbic asides and some memorable slapschtick, but as Ellen discovers, laughs aren't enough, and, like the relationship it depicts, everything goes terribly slack in the middle.