 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 | 🎙️ EPISODE 646: 02.16.23 Starting in 2020, I decided to watch & review the entire Nicolas Cage filmography in alphabetical order. This is 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔜𝔢𝔞𝔯 𝔬𝔣 ℭ𝔞𝔤𝔢 – Chapter 35. In what was a very busy time for Cage (he starred in 9 films between 1992-1995), this marks his second Bergman (Andrew) collaboration, with the other being a very recent alphabetical entry in this series, Honeymoon in Vegas, which holds up WAY better than this. Loosely based on a true story, It Could Happen to You tells the tale of the nicest cop who ever lived, his nagging, miserable Puerto Rican wife and a cute blonde waitress he falls in love with after promising her half of his potential lotto winnings when he's short on a tip. If the movie is a question, it is a poor one. |
Our narrator, Isaac Hayes, sets the scene in the Big Apple with a classic "intro to the main characters montage"...
The most unrealistic part of this is that there's never been a cop as good and as nice as this. You could convince me that the Marvel characters were real before you could convince me that such a cop has or will ever exist. But I digress. We're then introduced to his wife, Rosie Perez. Kind of a one-trick pony, sure, but she's good at the schtick...
And finally, girl-next-door Bridget Fonda. Between her and Nicolas Coppola, this is real Hollywood royalty on display. I don't have a strong feeling on her as an actor one way or the other. She seems fine overall, I guess, and this isn't exactly heavy-lifting. Everything about this flick is paint-by-numbers and she stays perfectly within the lines for what the audience is looking for.
As with a lot of these random 90s movies, it features a great supporting cast. Character actor city. Including: Seymour Cassel (again), Stanley Tucci, Red Buttons, Vincent Pastore (Big Pussy on The Sopranos) and the great Richard Jenkins.
OK, so we know all the characters! This is how you made a movie in 1994, folks. Textbook. Some static shots of NYC Baby and we're ready to roll. Fonda is a down on her luck failed actress, and currently bankrupt because: credit cards and estranged husband...
So Rosie gives Cage numbers to play in the 64-million dollar lottery. Then he goes to have lunch at the diner where Fonda works. This movie already smells a little racist, huh? With the blonde Fonda being the IDEAL (white lady), and the squawking Rosie as the caricature/other, let's say, not as ideal? I'll speak no more on this matter as it's not my concern.
Cage and Fonda share some playful banter before the cops get a call to leave and do some policing. Here is the whole movie's plot in a nutshell...
We see Cage playing stick ball in the streets with the local Queens tuffs before coming home to more complaining and whining from you-know-who. But Cage and Rosie have good chemistry together doing the bit. It turns out, Cage got their anniversary date wrong on the lotto ticket. So Cage makes jiffy pop. And they win the flipping lotto! Whoa...
Rosie is already pissed that other people had the numbers and they're only gonna get 4 millie. Little does she know about their share! Honest cop Cage looks exasperated. He comes clean about the lotto tip and Rosie acts completely rational about it. Not! ...
Cage discusses the issue with his partner and he says that he would buy the Knicks if he'd won. I don't think you could've gotten the Knicks for that sum, even in 1994 lol. At the diner, he's prepared to just give her a gift and a $50 tip, but he sees her being nice to a gay guy with AIDS and holy shit this is what seals the deal for his decision?! Wow...
Before he brings up the lotto. He gives her the gift and it's incredibly sweet, I'm not gonna lie...
They talk some more and she tells him about the bankruptcy. He gives her a "Let's Make a Deal" scenario and she picks the lotto. Good choice! He tells her and she thinks it's a joke right off the bat...
Cage can do a lot of things. Most people think of Crazy Cage as the default. Or maybe Weirdo Cage. But damn he can do Sweet and Sincere Cage wonderfully too.
He breaks it to Rosie and she's cool and collected, of course. Cage brings up the AIDS thing lol...
Cage tries to sell the scenario by telling her she'll be a celebrity because of their goodwill and this resonates with her.
Later, they go to collect their oversized check with the other winners, including the Albany bowling team (Big Pussy cameo included)...
Rosie and Fonda briefly meet, and the "New York, New York" soundtrack is so cheesy but also perfect. Following the textbook to a T.
The 2-million dollar tip is a front page story. Everybody in the city is reading about it. Cage takes Rosie on an expensive spending spree and she complains when he gives some cash to a homeless vet. Why exactly did he ever date this monster? This is a stupid question to ask about a mid-90s romcom but it's probably the plot hole which dates this thing more than the wardrobe or the twin towers not being caved in.
Fonda's deadbeat husband (Stanley Tucci) calls and wants some of that hot lotto moolah. He's great in the all-too brief role as expected.
On his first day back on the job after the lotto, Cage comes across a deli getting robbed. Perfect timing, right? He breaks up the robbery by throwing a can of chili at the robber's head and gets shot in the process...
That was easily the most unrealistic part of the whole film: that a cop wouldn't immediately use his gun in a situation like that. Goddam. At Cage's big hero ceremony he announces he's gonna donate 10k to the cop's widow funs. Rosie thinks that's a fine idea. Yup. She sure does.
Cage comes home one day, still in a sling, to his apartment getting a full renovation. Rosie is turning half the building into a 6-BR apartment so they can sell it for bank and move to NJ. Cage isn't happy with any of this.
Meanwhile, Fonda buys the diner she worked at and renames it Ivonne's.
Cage misses his cop job. He goes to a fancy party with Rosie where she meets a rich slime ball played by Seymour Cassel and is immediately enthralled...
Cage leaves the boat, which is hosting a party for the lotto winners, when he sees Fonda arriving late. The boat leaves, so they go out to dinner together. The writing here is a little choppy and awkward as they do the whole "getting to know each other" thing. Cage tells her Rosie is the only girl he's ever been with. But he admits they've grown apart ("I'm CNN and she's the home shopping Network," is how he so eloquently puts it). They dance wordlessly to Tony Bennett and it goes on way too long.
The next day, these new best buddies go rollerblading and Cage ends up falling in the Central Park pond. Hilarious! ...
Then they go around doing good deeds with their money, like buying a bunch of people's subway fare and taking the local neighborhood Queens kids to Yankee stadium, which they have rented out for the day. Bridget Fonda pitches and it's adorable. The scene is set to Sinatra's "Young at Heart" and we're really butting up against the wall between the sincerely wholesome/cute and completely overdoing it...
Also — this is neither here nor there — but there's no way there Queens kids would be Yankees fans and not Mets fans, come on. Shea was booked that day?
Their altruistic antics get them back on the cover of the papers. Shocker: this pisses off Rosie. She starts throwing all his clothes out the window. At the same time, Stanley Tucci shows up at Fonda's apartment looking for money...
Rosie declares that she wants a divorce. And, as fate or romcom logic would have it, the two run into each other at the Plaza Hotel escaping their awful spouses. A romcom has never romcom'd this hard, folks...
The rags immediately pick up on their fling and have a field day with it. They are bonafide NYC tabloid celebs now. We cut to Cage in a meeting with his inept divorce lawyer and Rosie's ruthless one, played by one of the OG character dudes turned leading man, Richard Jenkins. Rosie got the boob job she always wanted. Cage's lawyer doesn't know what is going on...
Cage immediately says she can have all their lotto winnings, but her lawyer wants Fonda's money too. This leads to a mild Cage freakout...
His lawyer suggests he and Fonda stop seeing each other for awhile until it smooths over, so Cage crashes with his cop partner's fam. Now we get some stock trial scene comedy. Cage's lawyer brings up the fact that he got one of her numbers wrong. But then Rosie goes on and on about a dream she had about her dead father. It's pretty stupid. These courtroom scenes played strictly for laughs are rough. One of my least favorite 'types of scene' honestly.
The whole thing is being covered by the media like it's the biggest story ever. The jury awards Rosie all the money.
Cage attacks a reporter on the way out of the courthouse as Rosie leaves with her new boyfriend, Seymour Cassel.
All the goofs are thrown out the window for some heartfelt drama as Cage and Fonda come together in the diner...
If that wasn't sappy enough, they invite a homeless man (Isaac Hayes wearing a really horrible dreadlocks wig!) in for some soup. They slow dance while he slurps. I mean, Jesus, look at this shit...
So Isaac Hayes has been a NY Post photographer this entire time, and his story about the impossibly good couple goes proto-viral and thousands of people send them money in the mail. Literally everyone starts to donate: dock workers, firemen, a news stand guy. They end up with $600,000 in donations. And that's that. Issac gives the rundown, "where are they now" style and they live happily ever after...
I think THEY blew half their budget on the Yankee Stadium scene and that custom hot air balloon, tbh.
As mentioned upfront, this is not nearly as fun as Cage's previous movie with the same director, but it has its moments. The cliches wear thin in the end and everything is played so hard for the romcom normie crowd, it hurts. It is what it is. Next up we return to the wilds of late period action Cage with the marital arts/sci-fi mashup, Jiu Jitsu (2020). See ya then.
THE VERDICT: 5 CAGES OUT OF 10 • CLICK HERE for all 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔜𝔢𝔞𝔯 𝔬𝔣 ℭ𝔞𝔤𝔢 Chapters + Ongoing Rankings.
CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 645 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 647A ⫸
⫷ EPISODE 645 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 647A ⫸
It Could Happen to You is a 1994 American romantic comedy-drama film starring Nicolas Cage and Bridget Fonda. In a plot inspired by a real-life news story, a New York City police officer (Cage) who is short on cash and unable to tip his waitress (Fonda), half-jokingly offers to share his winnings if he happens to win the lottery. It was released on July 29, 1994.
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