Bonnie Hunt has a sense of humor that’s as dry as the Sahara. She’s always been the best part of films like Jumanji and Beethoven. Her wise-cracking tongue recalls great comediennes of the past like Jean Arthur and Carole Lombard. Now, in Return to Me, she steps behind the camera for the first time and brings her dry-as-toast wit with her. Good thing, because it’s the only thing that rescues this romantic comedy from being just another sticky mess on Hollywood’s kitchen floor.

As director, co-writer and co-star, Hunt has her funny fingerprints all over this picture. A total of four writers are credited, but the best parts of the script come from Hunt herself. The laughs flow free and frequent. So, too, does the goo.

David Duchovny breaks from his straight-arrow agent on The X-Files to play Bob Rueland, a straight-arrow architect whose wife (Joely Richardson) is killed before we get to know her. She worked at a zoo, she loved primates and she never said a bad word about anyone. In other words, she’s one of those flawless wives whose memories are meant to haunt the widower for at least enough scenes where we can see him walking in the rain, eating Chinese takeout on the floor of his suddenly-messy apartment and having crying jags with his dog (who’s also pining for his dear departed mistress).

In Return to Me, we get more than our fair share of these Ghost-like maudlin moments and for awhile we start to think that it’s heading in a similar supernatural direction. But then we realize that those 20 minutes of crying jags and walks in the rain were just a methodic setup for the real story of the movie. Return to Me comes alive when Rueland meets Grace, the sickly young waitress (Minnie Driver) who was the recipient of his late wife’s heart. Of course, in strict accordance with organ donor rules—not to mention standard Hollywood formula—neither realizes the true identity of the other. They’re just a couple of lonely souls who “meet cute” and seem like the perfect match for each other. It doesn’t hurt that every time they pass by each other, there’s a loud heartbeat throbbing on the soundtrack.

Puh-leeze.

Cloying moments like those are handled awkwardly and threaten to drown everything in sap. For extra measure, we also get a set of supporting characters straight out of Scriptwriting 101. There’s the sharp-tongued best friend (Hunt) with a boorish husband (James Belushi) who complains every time he’s asked to play with the kids because it cuts into his beer drinking. There’s the dead wife’s hip co-worker (David Alan Grier) who tries to ease the grieving husband back into the dating scene. And there’s Grace’s doting and doddering grandfather (Carroll O’Connor) who sits in the backroom of his Irish-Italian restaurant with a bunch of poker-playing buddies who serve as a kind of Greek geezer chorus commenting on love, heart-surgery scars and whether Frank Sinatra was a better crooner than Bing Crosby.

Though all the supporting cast is great, they’re forced to deliver laughably cornball lines with straight faces. It’s as if everyone thinks they’re in a 1940s movie starring Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck. If we forget we’re watching this in the new century, the soundtrack—heavy with Dean Martin, Sinatra and Pavarotti—is there to get us in the proper frame of mind.

To be fair, there is some nice, old-fashioned chemistry between the two leads. Driver is awfully sweet and surprisingly low-key as a girl who’s been on one too many blind dates. Forget about Mr. Right; at this point, she’ll take Mr. All-Right-You-Don’t-Have-Hair-Transplants! Duchovny is no Gary Cooper, but he rises above his deadpan demeanor to bring charm and wit to the relationship—not to mention the fact that he’s willing to suffer through the Sinatra vs. Crosby arguments.

The best moments in Return to Me aren’t the intended ones—you know, the earnest, sentimental scenes that are supposed to make us swoon with dewy-eyed romanticism. No, it’s the throwaway jokes, Hunt’s trademark, that make the movie bearable and, at times, delightful. For her first time behind the camera, Hunt has created what amounts to a warm family atmosphere, surrounding herself with some of her own relatives in bit parts as well as fellow actors she’s worked with in the past, including Holly Wortell who’s listed as “Blind Date From Hell” (you’ll know her when you see her) and co-writer Don Lake who also gets a few seconds as another blind date known in the credits as “Bad Hairpiece” (you’ll know him when you see him).

Return to Me may not generate many return visits at the box office, but it’s got enough tart one-liners to make it worth wading through the sentimental goo.



Recommended: Yes