I Love You to Death

In spite of Kevin Kline's fractured Italian accent, this is one of the funniest movies ever. It is a true story. I've seen the couple interviewed on two television programs.....they are exactly as Kevin Kline and Tracy Ullman depicted them. I have shown this tape to guests and most recently to a large group of seniors. My popularity rate has moved up a notch or two because of choosing this movie. It's a "feel good and leave you laughing" story. Well worth a trip and a search at the video store.

Remarkably, the film is based on a real event. But it takes off from that base and becomes a screwball comedy in the classic style.

Wonderfully droll performances are given by everyone in this Hitchcock-like farce about a murder that doesn't quite work and a man who just won't die. Joan Plowright steals every scene she is in -- which isn't easy in a film that is full of so many zany plot twists and hilarious lines of dialogue.

This film is a little gem of a comedy. See it if you can.

In the only feature film of his career that could be classified as a comedy River Phoenix called I Love You To Death a 'whacked out comedy'. Who am I to disagree.

Kevin Kline and Tracey Ullman are the stars of I Love You To Death and he's the exponential alpha male owner of a pizzeria in Tacoma, Washington where for the female customers he makes personal deliveries. With a cheesy Italian accent, probably deliberately so, Kline charms all the women who buy pizza to give their all to him. Mind you he still loves his wife. But there isn't a pair of breasts between 18 and 45 he can't pass up.

In I Love You To Death Ullman has decided she's up to HERE with Kline's serial infidelities. She and her mother Joan Plowright decides he has to die. They enlist the aid of pizzeria employee River Phoenix who plays a new age kid type, not terribly far from the real life River Phoenix although he didn't think so.

I believe that director Lawrence Kasdan must have read an account of the murder of Rasputin because in real life it took all kinds of things to put him down. They were more successful than this team of assassins were with Kline.

Adding to the hilarity when Phoenix enlists them to help are brain dead druggies William Hurt and Keanu Reeves. The three of them trying to get the job done on Kline is very funny. Reeves and Phoenix met on this film and the next project for both would be My Own Private Idaho the best film both of them ever did.

Dame Joan Plowright a.k.a Lady Olivier is also very funny with another cheesy accent. She's from Yugoslavia and no matter which ethnicity the former polyglot republic had, they're all vengeful people.

In the end though all is forgiven. You have to see the film to know what I'm talking about.

Clever writing, able direction and a stellar cast make this film a modern classic that stands up to multiple viewings. Tracey Ullman and Joan Plowright star as Rosalie Boca and her mother Nadja, both so furious at the infidelity of Rosalie's husband Joey (Kevin Kline) that they decide to kill him. The ensuing misadventures are VERY funny, particularly the attempts by hired hit-men Harlan and Marlon James, not-too-bright cousins played by William Hurt and Keanu Reeves.

All of the actors in this movie do hysterical work and make this movie very enjoyable to watch. Even Kline does a great Italian! Plowright and Tracey Ullman really resemble one another and their scenes are great. Add Harlan & Marlon (Hurt & Keanu) and River Phoenix, and a great cameo by Miriam Margoyles are Kleins' mother, and you've got yourself a highly watchable movie.