Regarding Henry (1991)

Directed by Mike Nichols. Starring Harrison Ford, Annette Bening, Bill Nunn, Mikki Allen, Bruce Altman, Donald Moffat, Rebecca Miller, Elizabeth Wilson, James Rebhorn. [PG-13]

Regarding this manipulative and contrived yuppie-rehab drama in terms that Jay Sherman can understand, it stinks. Ford plays an unethical lawyer and emotionally-remote family man who gets shot in the head during a convenience store robbery and awakens from his coma with amnesia. On his connect-the-dots path to becoming a better man, he has to relearn how to walk and read and *gasp* love. There’s a way to make this sort of thing work, but it’s difficult to do so in a way that’s both honest and accessible, and Nichols and screenwriter J. J. Abrams miss the boat so widely that it’s actually kinda impressive. The narrative arc is in dire need of a reality check (they sure do gloss over those money problems), but the devil is in the details, so consider some of these: 1) Ford is welcomed back to his law firm (presumably out of pity) despite no longer knowing anything about practicing law, 2) in order to arrive at a “shocking” revelation, a supporting character needs to have decided to never spring for new stationery, 3) the most compassionate character in the film is a chronic sexual harasser, 4) Ford conveniently stumbles upon the cover-up of discovery in a case he won just before the shooting, and not only does he naïvely address it with his crooked bedfellows, but he actually seeks out the wronged party (in perhaps the stupidest scene in a consistently stupid movie). One supposes that it’s fitting that a movie that argues that childlike innocence is synonymous with being a good person has been crafted at the intellect level of a child. Abrams, credited as “Jeffrey,” also has a bit part; John Leguizamo appears briefly as the convenience store gunman.

32/100