(1997) In the whiteness of God's kingdom, a pair of incredibly inept angels, Miss O'Reilly (Holly Hunter) and Mr Jackson (Delroy Lindo), receive one last chance ("Things have changed down there") from the archangel Gabriel (Dan Hedaya) to bring together a man and a woman in holy matrimony: "If you fail, you stay down there forever."

This violently funny romantic comedy (closing credits include an amusing stop-motion animation), directed by Danny Boyle from John Hodge's screenplay (made in heaven), asks if love "is merely an emotional adaptation to a physical necessity" and answers the question with a shot through the heart.

An impudent, passionate, overindulged, beautiful, rich woman, Celine Naville (Cameron Diaz), with nothing better to do for amusement than shooting apples off people's heads, wounds Elliot (Stanley Tucci), her dentist (who "gave her her first filling"), resulting in her father (Ian Holm) telling her she will have to get a job as punishment: "Do you know how hard it is to find a good dentist in this town?"

Down in the bowels of her father's building, Robert Lewis (Ewan McGregor), a British janitor who writes trashy novels on the side, gets fired and replaced by a robot; at the same time his girlfriend Lily dumps him for someone else; then O'Reilly and Jackson evict him from his abode.

In retaliation, Robert kidnaps Celine and takes her to a shack in the desert where she (having been abducted as a 12-year-old and held for six weeks before her father paid for her release) instructs her incompetent abductor how to demand a ransom: "We have an opportunity to make millions of dollars here." Jackson and O'Reilly get hired as bounty hunters to bring back Celine to her father and kill Robert. Pretending to be newly weds, Lucille and Ritchie Vanderlow, the couple has to deal with the overwrought tactics of the aggressive angels, operating under the assumption that people put into jeopardy bond emotionally. The destructive antics of the angels occasionally put me in mind of a Roadrunner cartoon.

Failing to obtain the ransom, Celine ("I'm having a great time!") decides they should rob a bank during which Robert receives a leg wound. She takes him to Elliot (bullet extraction being similar to tooth extraction), who operates without anesthetic: "I'm sure you'll pass out as the pain gets worse."

Robert tells her of his being in danger in a dream on a game show, Perfect Love, when she saves him. Following their separation over dissension and jealousy, Jackson's best literary effort tricks Celine into returning to Robert who again employs his honesty inexpertly, leaving him with a choice between heaven and hell.

After Jackson and O'Reilly (who have suffered multiple wounds) resort to kidnapping Celine, manservant Mayhew (Ian McNiece) and Mr Naville show up for further mayhem. Upstairs Gabriel asks God: "How could anything be beyond your control?" As one might expect in a real love story, these people's behavior is absurd and irrational.

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Copyright © 2009 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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