Diagonaldi Very well executed

Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

ShangLuda Admirable film.

Borserie it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

Richard Burin Forget Paris (Billy Crystal, 1995) is a rather chilly examination of how tricky it can be to forge a happy marriage, with a few cartoonish episodes chucked in alongside. Billy Crystal does his usual schtick as he romances Debra Winger, though the structure is pure Woody Allen - the whole film told by a group of friends at a party - and the foreign funeral set-up half-inched somewhat obviously from Billy Wilder's underrated Avanti!. The result is somewhat unsatisfactory. It's certainly no Moonstruck or Broadway Danny Rose, but it's not even When Harry Met Sally - and the Paris-set sections were disappointingly brief considering I'd just returned from my travels and was secretly hankering for a glossily-photographed sight-seeing tour. There are comic compensations, though. Playing a basketball referee, Crystal's meltdown on the court is the obvious highlight - along with his senile father-in-law's fondness for regurgitating ad slogans. "You asked for it... you got it. Toyota. You asked for it... you got it. Toyota. You asked for it... you got it. Toyota."

btm1 "Forget Paris" is a feel-good romantic comedy about the on again off again relationship between Mickey (Billy Crystal, who also directed, produced and was one of the writers), an NBA referee, and Ellen (Debra Winger), a customer relations trouble shooter for an airline.Friends of sports writer Andy (Joe Mantegna) are gathering at a restaurant to be introduced to Liz (Cynthia Stevenson) before their wedding. Liz comments that how she and Andy met must be the oddest ever (a fax had one digit off in the fax number and went to Andy by mistake). Andy says no, how Mickey met Ellen is the weirdest. They met because she helped him bury his father. That starts the friends telling the story of Mickey and Ellen.Some critics consider this way of telling the story and the plot stale and schmaltzy; but it is so well done that I could care less.The film genre is romantic comedy; this film's strength is the comedy part of that term. I could give examples but comedy is best when the punchline (or its visual equivalent) is unexpected. Let me just say that one of my favorite bits starts with the focus on an organist going through the motions of preparing to play serious music.Billy Crystal is known to be a serious basketball fan and in part the film is like a documentary about refereeing NBA games, with a huge number of basketball stars playing themselves. I was bemused at the end of the credits when the standard disclaimer came up saying that all the characters and names in the film were fictitious. Not hardly in this film.I should mention that Cynthia Stevenson's hysterically tearful performance as Liz listening to Mickey's and Ellen's highs and lows was great.I also loved the sound track. Ella Fitzgerald singing "April in Paris" is so great; also, Billy Holiday doing the opening "Our Love Is Here To Stay." David Sanborn's saxophone version of the "Star Spangled Banner" is also particularly great.My one quibble is that I found Debra Winger's voice very sexy in 1982's "Officer and a Gentleman" and she didn't sound the same in 1995's "Forget Paris." I probably don't sound the same as I did 13 years ago either.

moonspinner55 Sadly lackluster romantic comedy, co-written, directed and starring Billy Crystal, is told in deadly flashbacks. A group of friends recount a colleague's courtship (and eventual marriage) to an unfulfilled woman, resulting in comic disasters. French locations and a bright cast do help a little bit, but the screenplay isn't very funny, instead becoming weighed down with cheap, lousy sentiment that doesn't play (and has more than a whiff of "When Harry Met Sally..." besides!). Only a minimum of laughs surface, particularly when William Hickey is on-screen as Debra Winger's aged father. Otherwise, Crystal and Winger are not well-matched and their marital ups-and-downs have a depressive feel, with an uneasy give and take full of failed wisecracks and pregnant pauses. Forget it! *1/2 from ****

theowinthrop FORGET Paris is a sweet romantic comedy which Billy Crystal made after his best romantic comedy, WHEN HARRY MET SALLY. This time, though, it is Debra Winger rather than Meg Ryan who is opposite him. But Winger does nicely in the Ryan part and Crystal does nicely too.Crystal is a basketball referee who is accompanying his father's dead body to Normandy for burial. The airline sends the body to Switzerland accidentally, and Winger is the airline official who smooths Crystal's ruffled feathers. She even attends the funeral, and soon the two of them are exploring the sites of Paris together. They get on well, but Crystal has to return to the U.S. But he returns and proposes marriage. After an initial delay, Winger accepts the proposal, and we watch the resulting marriage.It is an intensely felt love affair, but it isn't smooth. She does not like losing her high paying job in Paris to return to the U.S., nor that he is going around the country most of the time as a referee at games. He tries to work at a different job, and finds her father (William Hickey) driving him batty with his senility (he keeps repeating the Toyota automobile slogan from the 1990s). And there are more serious problems about infertility, including a funny routine when Crystal is repeatedly delayed running to a fertility clinic.The story of their love affair and marriage is related by Joe Mantegna, Richard Masur, Julie Kavner, and John Spencer, at a dinner party in an Italian restaurant. The personalities and marriage situations of the friends of our hero and heroine get exposed too during the dinner. All of the friends give good performances as does Hickey and Robert Constanza as the world's most philosophically charming waiter. Listen to him describing various drinks.The film is a feel good movie, and does well as such.