No wonder we love it!

Rating: Null/10 (9 October 2001)

Rick loses the love of his life suddenly and without a comprehensible explanation from Elsa. If anything like that has ever happened to you, you know how devastating it can be. After you've walked around like a stunned ox for a time, you start to feel a need for revenge. "How could she leave me when I loved her so much?" followed by "she must have never loved me at all. She lied to me."
That, of course, makes her a terrible person, and terrible people should be made to suffer, right?
In real life, we seldom get the chance to make the one who rejected us suffer as we have. But that's only part of the dream. Underneath that is the fondest dream of all; that someday, somehow we will learn that they DID love us after all.
Rick gets both dreams fulfilled, and thus we who have been through what he has (and who hasn't to one degree or another) get a little of our own back through Rick.
No wonder we love it. Everyone we care about in it wins. Rick gets one last romp with Elsa, then gets to be the one who gives HER up. ("Closure" at last!) Elsa gets to explain that she isn't a bad person, Laslo gets his wife back, and just about everyone (except the Nazis) gets to feel noble. Even the womanizing Chief of police gets a new friend!
Don't think I'm putting it down, gang. I love it too.