(1995) At the closing buzzer in a crucial game between the Phoenix Suns and the San Antonio Spurs in Phoenix, referee Mickey Gordon (Billy Crystal) - a little man among very tall players - makes a controversial call against Charles Barkley (himself) after which he's kept in seclusion under police guard. "Mickey got it right," says sportswriter Andy (Joe Montegna) to his fiancée Liz (Cynthia Stevenson), who replies: "If I only liked basketball …"

If you only like romantic comedies, you'll fall in love with this one, produced and directed by Billy Crystal, who co-wrote the screenplay with Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel. As Andy and Liz are waiting at a table in a restaurant in New York City for their friends to arrive, he begins telling her the story of "the strangest getting together" of a couple, when the waiter (Robert Costanzo) describes the house red wine as like himself: "Fruity but oddly appealing."

Mickey flew to France from New York, accompanying his father's casket for burial amongst Dad's WWII GI buddies; but upon arrival in Paris, he discovers that the airline has lost his father's remains: "If I were Hitler you'd give me my father. If I were Hitler, you'd give me your country!"

After waiting several days in a hotel, Mickey's met by Ellen (Debra Winger), an Ailes de France representative, who apologizes ("A terrible thing has been done to you"), informs him that the casket has been recovered (missent to Switzerland and quarantined for "health reasons"), drops by a restaurant to say that he will be reimbursed for hotel and plane fare, and shows up at the cemetery for the interment as Mickey's expressing his final sentiments to the parent who walked out on him at ten: "Thanks for not getting killed so I could be born."

She finds him to be disturbed but charming; he puts off returning home to spend a week with her, sightseeing ("A lot like New York but different") and romancing, imagining himself beside her along the Seine to be Gene Kelly in An American in Paris. When he asks her if she dreams in French or English, she says in French with English subtitles.

Eventually he has to leave her because the NBA season is starting; Mickey and his crew, Jack (John Spencer) and Tommy, are the best. Liz is stunned; Andy explains: "But he tells himself, 'Forget Paris.'" However, in Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's (himself) farewell game between the Lakers and Pistons, Mickey loses his cool by bringing his personal life on to the court.

Suspended for a week, Mickey returns to Paris, and though the longest he's previously ever lived with another woman is eight hours, he proposes, only to find out she's already married to (but separated from) a handsome, rich Frenchman. When she tells him that he makes her laugh while her husband makes her miserable, Mickey says if given an opportunity he could do that, too.

Eventually she will give him the chance - "Marriage is both people being miserable" - ("That's not gonna be us," Andy assures Liz) but not until another couple, Craig (Richard Masur) and Lucy (Julie Kavner) join Andy and Liz at their table, who then pick up the story. Living in New York City, Ellen ("I gave up everything for you"), worried that she may have "married Mickey on the rebound," hates her new job and his apartment; while Mickey's away on long road trips refereeing, she drives to work with Safe-T-Man (himself) in the passenger's seat.

A critical turning point in their relationship occurs after she goes to a vet with a pigeon caught in a sticky glue trap for mice stuck to her hair: she's happy, getting what she wants while Mickey, agreeing to take a trial year off from the NBA, attempts selling cars at Craig's Subaru dealership.

Mickey no longer takes an interest in art and culture as he had with Ellen in Paris - "Forget Paris?" says an astonished Mickey: "How do you forget the best week in your life?" to which she replies: "Maybe that's all we were - a great week" -Lucy relates: "Forget Paris, he was courting."

Then her father Arthur (William Hickey), muttering advertisements in his dementia, moves in. Next to arrive at the restaurant, Jack and his second "Mrs Jack" Lois (Cathy Moriarty) - the waiter describes the martinis as like himself, "Dry and explosive" - quickly adding another chapter to the ongoing narrative with the Gordons' ordeal to conceiving a baby, requiring hormone injections and an insane drive to the fertility clinic with Mickey's sperm (never say "Piece of cake").

But they've been separated for four months, Ellen returning to Paris and Mickey refereeing games. When the last couple appears in the restaurant very late into the evening (can you guess who?), the waiter says of the champagne: "Bubbly and dying to go home."

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Copyright © 2011 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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