Date With An Angel (1987)
We can offer no rational reason why we became fond of this little piece of fluff, one of God-knows-how-many VHS movies we purchased for video store inventories throughout the 80's and 90's......
It bombed badly in its oh so brief theatrical run, but we nursed a gut feeling that video rental customers would adopt it like a stray kitten....(especially if all the copies of the A-list blockbuster movie were all rented out).
And we were right. The film was so sweetly innocent, corny and old-fashioned, it almost looked like a throwback to the lighter-than-air screwball comedies of the 1930's.
Way up in Heaven, the Lord's assigning a retrieval task to an adorable Angel (Emmanuelle Beart). Some poor soul's on his way to the grave and she's to escort him to back up to the Pearly Gates.
Lacking GPS, the Angel bounces off an orbiting communications satellite, bruising a wing and sending her plummeting to Earth faster than Katy Perry on a jumbo Amazon vibrator.
She lands, wouldn't ya know it, in an apartment complex's swimming pool.....right near one of the residents, sensitive, struggling singer-songwriter Jim Sanders (Michael E. Knight).
Jim carries multiple woes: Chronic headaches (hint, hint), three seriously obnoxious frat-boy bros as best friends, and an engagement to marry the pampered, wealthy Princess-like Patty Winston (Phoebe Cates, cute as a button even as she spends the entire film in a state of hysterical rage.)
You could write the rest of the movie yourself......After rescuing the Angel and binding her injured wing, Jim falls head over heels for her. But his three dopey bros want to steal her away to exploit her for cash while Patty's consumed with jealous tantrums over this mysterious girl who came out of nowhere.
Lots of slapstick comes into play (probably too much of it for the film's own good). But the main comic attraction is by far Beart's Angel, who only speaks in high pitched squeals and discovers an overpowering love for fast food French Fries.
The whole package, photographed in the most soft focus color we've ever seen in an 80's film is a silly, cuddly confection, with ethereal special effects by Richard Edlund, (the first 'Star Wars' films).
Perfect for anyone who'd like to revisit the kinder, gentler 1980's (at least compared to this day and age).....and for 10 year old girls slumber parties.....(how could kids not become entranced with Beart, who can stuff French Fries into her mouth and still look....uh....like she fell from Heaven?)
3 stars (***).
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