The male (and Hollywood) counterpart to Me Myself I, an alternative-reality switcheroo whereby a driven careerist, through the intervention of a magical mystical genie, gets to find out how life would have turned out if he had not gone off to London in '87 but had stayed home and married his college sweetheart. As in the earlier Australian film, the protagonist retains full knowledge of "real" life and is granted no knowledge of the alternative one -- a built-in invalidation of the experiment. (Genie: "I know this thing is really bizarre to you.") There are thus elements of the standard amnesia plot (what does he do for a living? does he have his own office? where is it?) as well as of the body-snatcher plot (the daughter-he-never-had senses he's a ringer). The protagonist here, however, makes much less effort to get away with the charade, or in other words less effort to shore up the shaky premise. Key to that premise is the provision that the hero cannot return to his old life until he learns to value his alternative one, a provision that fairly cries out for an unhappy ending, though we have to settle for a merely embarrassing and unsatisfying one. Téa Leoni, as the would-have-been wife, is amazingly natural under the circumstances, not the least of which circumstances are the trials and tribulations of having to act opposite the hey-look-at-me antics of the self-anointed center of the universe, Nicolas Cage. With Don Cheadle and Jeremy Piven; directed by Brett Ratner. (2000) — Duncan Shepherd
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