An itsy-bitsy independent film of unabating banality. Writer-director-actor Edward Burns, a media darling after The Brothers McMullen, yesterday's news after She's the One, presumes here to deal in plain truths about common folk, with support on the soundtrack from such introspective and in-touch spokespersons as Bruce Springsteen ("Oh, oh, oh, I'm on fire"), Patti Scialfa, and Sheryl Crow. But Burns the actor, situated by Burns the writer-director in a small-town romantic triangle, is blinded by narcissism; and rock-and-roller Jon Bon Jovi is self-conscious and constrained as the true-blue marriage-minded boyfriend who, though cuter and sexier to boot, can put up no amorous competition to bad-penny Burns (blinded, indeed); and Lauren Holly, as the torn girlfriend, displays that rare form of emaciation -- all calories somehow go straight to her bosom -- that qualifies her as a Hollywood actress but not as a humble hash-house waitress. The portrait of a manipulative, duplicitous, unregenerate Total Bastard, and the accompanying spectacle of a Good Girl making bad choices, might be maddening in the way intended, but the emotion carries straight through to the final trite shot of the unchained heroine driving down that lonely road to an uncertain future with an unafraid smile on her face. Patti Scialfa, take it away. (1998) — Duncan Shepherd
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