The Wives He Forgot

At the start of the movie, a large bald man is beating up Jay Miller, whose name we don't know yet. Mina witnesses this and is nearly attacked herself, but Jay, despite his injuries, goes after him.

In her father's former law office somewhere north of Chicago, Charlotte has taken over her father's practice, and she's doing okay with various types of cases. Her mother died when she was young, and she lost her father while in law school. Jay barely makes it into the office and Charlotte can see he needs help. She takes him to the hospital, where she finds out he has no identification and doesn't seem to know who he is.

Mina comes forward to say this man saved her life. He is honored by the town and called an "angel", given the name Gabriel. He moves in with Charlotte, who lives in her parents' big house, and goes to work as a volunteer at the hospital. Charlotte hasn't had good luck with men, but Gabriel seems very nice and, although Charlotte sort of has a boyfriend, it becomes obvious what's really going on.

Then the ex-wives show up. Not one but two. Gillian is beautiful but spoiled, and Alicia is just plain nasty. We finally learn the man's real name, and we learn he worked at a travel agency. With all his traveling, it seems he was able to convince both women he was only traveling when, in fact, he was with one wife when not with the other. This is bigamy. The women want justice. Charlotte reluctantly agrees to serve as Jay's lawyer.

The prosecutor looks almost exactly like Lauren Bacall but of course is much younger.

This isn't really a romantic comedy, but the first half is so light-hearted and the music is perky. The second half seems more dark but can't really be taken that seriously.

The ending is great.

Molly Ringwald is all grown up. In this role she almost makes one forget about the cute teens she used to play. Almost. In some scenes it's still obvious she used to be cute. In others she looks so old ... well, let's say mature. And she's not exactly slim. She looks like real women look. And she does a pretty good job. As a male, I don't particularly care for her scenes with Charlotte's friend Gwen, who is attractive but has the attitude "Men are pigs and Oprah is our queen". And of course Charlotte gladly joins her in feeling this way, the only time I can't really like this character.

Mark Humphrey does a good job as the mysterious Gabriel.

Other than that, this is just a Lifetime movie, with a silly mystery. It's sort of enjoyable.

Have not seen Molly Ringwald,(Charlotte) in a very long time and enjoyed seeing her large brown eyes and the sparkle she always had with her personality and those expressions on her face. Charlotte plays a lawyer who has a very bad time trying to find her Soul Mate in life and gets dumped quite often. However, Mark Humphrey, (Gabriel) manages to drop into her life and things really start to change, except that Gabriel cannot remember a thing after an accident. This is really a comedy through out most of the picture and then it turns into a drama, and you begin to wonder just how this TV film is going to end. The ending will surprise you and all the actors in the film gave an outstanding performance. Great seeing Molly back on the Big Silver Screen where she belongs, what a talent.

He looks like Derek Jacobi, and she reminds you of Sigourney Weaver. It's not them, of course, far from it, but they make a nice performance together, as she finds him knifed and bleeding with a horrible bump in his head, so she takes care of him just for the moment, until he is proved to suffer from total permanent amnesia - he can't even remember his name. That's the start of a long difficult maze into all kinds of relationships and legal difficulties, since it turns up that he has two wives still living, both young and charming. So he is a bigamist and has absolutely no memory of it. The trials dominate the second half of the film, but it is worth waiting for the outcome, which no one could guess. The prosecutor and his two former wives are abominable, which helps his case, but that is not all of it. There are many refreshing surprises in this film, there are some nice elements of humour also, so it is definitely enjoyable. The one thread which is not followed up is the case of her former husband, who turns up unexpectedly without anyone having had any idea of his existence, causing some upsets, he is present at the trial, but he doesn't testify. The final question and issue is, whether any man ever can be trusted at all.

Molly Ringwald (looking a bit heavy and unhappy) is a general practice lawyer in a seaside town who defends a handsome amnesiac on trial for bigamy and tax evasion. TV-made mystery has a lightly comic, frisky side and a direction with some imagination. Ringwald is well-cast as a somewhat-kooky modern working woman who can't find a good man, although her frumpy clothes and hairstyle make her appear much older than she is--and older than her character has to be. The movie ends up scrambled like an egg, with a cartoonish version of a courtroom trial in the second-half and an iffy final tag that leaves the whole thing feeling a bit pointless. Molly has some choice scenes, and it's good to have her carrying a film again (TV or otherwise), but she's wound up too tight, and might've benefited from some improvisation, a looser director, or just some breathing room to control her tics and exaggerated facial expressions. The flick is a fun time-filler, though a wispy-thin one, without even one foot grounded in some kind of reality. **1/2 from ****

I'll second, third, or whatever the notion that this thing is amusing to watch just for Ringwald's performance; having a "real" movie actress in one of these formulaic vehicles kicks it up several notches. But in addition the whole thing is kind of a subversive self-parody of this genre that doesn't take itself too seriously, with some "knowing winks" thrown in by the writer. For example at one point when they are home for the evening, lawyer Ringwald's way-too-good-to-be-true "house boyfriend/client" says something improbable like "shall we see what's on Lifetime" and she comes back with something like "no I've got to work". There are a lot of courtroom scenes where Ringwald is an amusingly klutzy defense lawyer, including scenes with the "evil queen" prosecutor where the jury is comically sympathetic to over-emoting prosecution witnesses; its a bit like a low-rent "Legally Blonde" at times.