Frankie and Johnny finds director Garry Marshall waste deep in schmaltz again with a romantic comedy aimed squarely at the same multiplex hordes that made his Richard Gere Julia Roberts starrer Pretty Woman such a huge hit a few years ago. This time around Marshall has Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer laddling out the syrup and though they are both major stars, their marquee wattage is considerably dimmer than the Gere/Roberts combo. In adapting his successful two-person, one-set Broadway play Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune for the big screen, writer Terrence McNally has sought to broaden its visual horizons by adding more locations and a small supporting cast but the dynamics of his story, focusing on a lonely, disillusioned waitress and a just-paroled short order cook who meet and fall in love amid the scrambled eggs and hash browns of a Noo York fast food diner, are seriously compromised by a simple case of miscasting.
On stage Frankie and Johnny were a couple of lonely, middle-aged plain Janes carrying the scars of broken relationships and the actors playing them, Kathy Bates and Kenneth Welsh, by dint of their very ordinariness, convincingly disappeared into their roles. Pacino and Pfeiffer, on the other hand, despite their considerable talent, bring too much movie star baggage to the table to ever be able to fit the profile of a couple of nondescript working class stiffs who have spent the better part of their lives flipping burgers. Not that this is of any concern for the director, of course. This is, after all, a star vehicle geared to the sensibilities of an undemanding mass audience. Thus, what once played on the stage as a poignant, intimate portrait of disillusionment and resignation has been co-opted into a calculating rom-com that simply reduces the trials and traumas of life in a big cold city to casuistic cliches. Thankfully, both Nathan Lane as the heroine's wise-cracking neighbour and Hector Elizondo as the diner owner shine briefly in small supporting roles.
