Nancy Savoca, whose first film was True Love, resumes her theme of miscommunication or noncommunication between the sexes: a foursome of U.S. Marines, ca. 1963, have made a habit and a formalized competition of trying to round up the ugliest dates for a kind of upside-down beauty pageant, with a panel of judges and a cash prize to be awarded the "winner." This situation is passed through too quickly and perhaps a little flinchingly. The subsequent efforts of one repentant Marine (River Phoenix) to soothe the feelings of his particular "entrant" (Lili Taylor) ease us into somewhat more conventional romantic-comedy terrain: the dinner at a hoity-toity restaurant or the sightseeing stop at the very penny arcade that Rock Hudson and Paula Prentiss visited in Man's Favorite Sport? The mismatch of foul-mouthed jarhead and idealistic folkie, though it hurts credibility, helps to nudge the comedy into an uncrowded area in American movies, the pathetic mode: the Joan Baez idolator's confidence in the power of music to change the world is no less doom-laden than the soldier's confidence in the Pentagon. Richard Panebianco, Holly Near. (1991) — Duncan Shepherd
This movie is not currently in theaters.