Product: The Butcher's Wife [VHS] (1991)
Rating: 5.0
GOTTA SING THE BLUES
THE BUTCHER'S WIFE was critically reviled in its release; star Demi Moore was even given the dubious honor of being nominated for a Razzy award for her performance in this and NOTHING BUT TROUBLE. But I liked the movie. It's charming simplicity and romantic themes are contrived and hardly original, but they're done with such unabashed sentimentality, you can't help but get moony-eyed too. Moore plays a clairvoyant somewhat naive Southern girl who decides butcher George Dzunda is the man of her dreams, and she proposes to him and he whisks her off to his butcher shop in Manhattan. There she uses her beguiling witchery to drastically alter the lives of the people she encounters: Jeff Daniels, a stuffy psychiatrist who sees Moore as a threat to his psychological world; Frances McDormand as a closet lesbian who decides to go with her feelings and admit her attraction to Margaret Colin, who just happens to be Daniels' squeeze. Moore also gives stuffy choral director Mary Steenburgen the confidence to pursue her secret desire of a career as a blues singer (Steenburgen does her own singing and she's quite effective). All of the confusion eventually works its way out and the appropriate couples find love after all. The movie is practically stolen by Steenburgen, whose performance is simply marvelous. The rest of the cast, particularly Max Perlich as a troubled teen and Colin and McDormand are fabulous. It certainly isn't a classic movie, but it's warmheartedness and glowing performances made it extremely enjoyable to this viewer.