One Fine Day parents guide

One Fine Day Parent Guide

Parent Movie Review

After removing the “shoobie shoobie doobie dou-wop-wops” from the popular title song, and turning it into a lame meandering ballad, I had a good idea that the script of One Fine Day may follow the same course. And it did.

Michelle Pfeiffer is the greatest reason this picture is even remotely interesting. She plays Melanie Parker, a struggling single mother who is doing all of the usual single-mom-in-the-movies things: Having to take her child to work on the day of a big meeting, spilling juice on her clothes, getting runs in her nylons, and arguing with her ex because he wants to play drums with Bruce Springsteen instead of coming to his son’s soccer games. Meanwhile, Jack Taylor (George Clooney) plays the single dad and popular newspaper columnist. The two meet one fine day when they both miss the field trip at their children’s school.

Ahhh, the single life. After watching this, it seems the only problems single parents have are putting in a couple of hours of work for bosses that aren’t very smart, and keeping their cell phones charged. These two rack up cellular phone and taxi bills that would offset the national debt, as they make arrangements to keep their children occupied while Melanie makes her big presentation and Jack proves the mayor of New York is in deep with the Mob. All in a day’s work.

However, Pfeiffer has a couple of remarkable moments, the best one during an after work meeting when she tells the big client that her son’s soccer game is more important than his project. Her decision is predictable, but her passion in telling the client why she must leave puts a warmth into the film that the lame script couldn’t provide otherwise.

The ending drags out to a predictable conclusion, and we get to see Pfeiffer in her underwear for a second time. Cut the ending down to size, drop a few unneeded profanities, add those shoobie-shoobies back into the title theme and One Fine Day would be so much finer.

Updated