Review/Film; The Jumbling of Households in 'See You' (Published 1989)
- ️Fri Apr 21 1989
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- See You in the Morning
- Directed by Alan J. Pakula
- Drama, Romance
- PG-13
- 1h 59m
- April 21, 1989
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''I wish you could be more forgiving to yourself,'' someone says to pretty Beth Goodwin (Alice Krige), a talented photographer. Beth's worst fault is that, though innocent, she still feels guilty for her husband's suicide.
Larry Livingston (Jeff Bridges) is a psychiatrist and knows better, but he has something of the same hangup. After his amicable divorce from the beautiful Jo (Farrah Fawcett), he says to his ex-mother-in-law, ''I had Miss All-America in my bed and I couldn't believe my luck.''
Larry and Beth meet cute, both suffering intense migraines at the 20th-wedding-anniversary celebration of mutual friends. They are attracted to each other but, being wounded, they fight that attraction until the moment they surrender to it. With only their children and other family members in attendance, they marry.
''See You in the Morning,'' Alan J. Pakula's new romantic comedy, is about that upscale phenomenon the movie identifies as ''musical families,'' the reference being to musical chairs. The film opens today at the 57th Street Playhouse and other theaters.
Will Larry find happiness with Beth and her two adorable children, living in the handsome Manhattan town house haunted by the ghost of Beth's dead husband? Will Beth ever forgive herself for having somehow failed her husband (David Dukes), a concert pianist made despondent by a paralyzed left hand? Will Beth's two adorable children adapt to Larry when their mother goes to Russia on an assignment? And, for that matter, will Larry's two adorable children adapt to Jo's new boyfriend and her career as America's most famous television model?
''See You in the Morning'' answers these and other equally probing questions in the breezy syntax of self-help columnists, in situations designed to elicit a painless tear or two along with the occasional chuckle. Though the actors are attractive and often persuasive, and though Mr. Pakula's screenplay has occasionally decent moments, it's all fairly ghastly. It's about life as lived in a series of model rooms at Bloomingdale's.