Love Field (1992)

Directed by Jonathan Kaplan. Starring Michelle Pfeiffer, Dennis Haysbert, Stephanie McFadden, Brian Kerwin, Louise Latham, Troy Evans, Peggy Rea, Cooper Huckabee, Johnny Ray McGhee, Beth Grant. [PG-13]

An unhappily-married Dallas housewife (Pfeiffer) obsessed with Jackie Kennedy is stunned by the JFK assassination and decides she must attend the funeral in Washington D.C. She hops on a bus, meets a wary black man (Haysbert) and his young daughter (McFadden), and it becomes a proper movie road trip when they end up traveling together through a series of misadventures, brushes with danger, emotional crises, life lessons, etc., mostly dealing with ugly racism and a police/FBI pursuit because of a misunderstanding. Pfeiffer’s ditzy character initially seems carved entirely out of stereotypes, right down to the platinum blonde hairdo, but she finds ways to cling to dignity and perseverance even as the screenplay lets her down time and again; Haysbert is less fortunate with the sort of polished, noble and well-spoken part that would’ve been written for Sidney Poitier thirty years prior. The flood of gimmicks and contrivances ultimately kill this seemingly sincere drama, with notable examples being how they happen upon a television just in time to see Lee Harvey Oswald get shot, the predictable chase complications undermining the personal odyssey and growth of the protagonist, and an argument in a barn fresh off the typewriter, resolved in a way that’s both obvious and can’t be believed. Filmed in 1990 but sat on the shelf for two years because of Orion Pictures’ financial woes.

39/100