Three of Hearts (1993)

I can always appreciate a good romantic comedy from the 90s, where people wore waist-high jeans with their shirts tucked in and over-sized leather jackets, not short of borrowing running shoes from the late 80s to complete the signature look. Men still slicked their hair back for that special date but weren't afraid to part a neat fringe in the middle on separate occasions, as if opening the curtains to the windows of their souls. A little (a lot) dramatic? This would eventually pave the way to a defining characteristic of the 90s, an era of overpopulated boy-bands pleading with girls around the world to quit playing games with their hearts - men who weren't afraid to let their hair down (so to speak), and ditch the mullet for some added empathy.Women on the other hand, quite simply put, were "doing it for themselves". Married or single, women had more freedom to play with at this point than ever before, and were slowly but surely climbing the corporate ladder with a newfound sense of value and independence. Dresses shared cupboard space with mini-dresses, denim overalls and crop-tops. Sexy met its match in the mini-skirt while plaid in general became crucial and defining.How the above ties in with 'Three of Hearts' begins with mainstream America's slow but evident growing stages of acceptance of gay and lesbian relationships in the early 90s. Although centred around the recent ending of a lesbian relationship, we never see any girl-on-girl action but that's okay because the relationship itself is successfully conveyed as being something very special and the essence is captured well. The acting was good and the humour not overly done like some 90s comedies and kids films like to do, but just a few things are left to questioning for me: 1) By omitting detail as to why Ellen broke up with Connie (other than "needing space"), I'm left wondering who to sympathise with more. 2) Is Connie intentionally trying to show Joe up with the plagiarised story issue and if not, how can she be so obviously obsessed with someone but not suspect Ellen to recognise the story when she is an expert in this field of literature, enough of an expert to lecture it to out-of-school-students? 3) Is it just about Ellen's classically modern beauty that makes Joe "want to be a better man?" and fall in love with her so suddenly because if it is, fair enough but if not, I cannot pinpoint exactly where the interest lies since Ellen doesn't do anything particularly spectacular to warrant such admiration from Joe so soon. In fact, I feel like Ellen's contribution to the story was far too underplayed and detached. This has nothing to do with Sherilyn though, who is beautiful enough to steal from the fact she is a great actress herself. 4) Who knew William Baldwin used to be so good looking?! (R must have mentioned it a dozen times and I agree!).The ending, I found to be weird. Again Connie seems so sure of herself and advises Joe to not give up on Ellen - she knows Ellen will come back to him if he tried reaching out for her. If this is how the film is wanting to show that Connie gives Joe her blessing, I am sure it could have been done in better ways than to seemingly show Joe up... again. The weirdness in the ending seems to balance things out, both of them don't get the girl. Great movie, otherwise. M

SPOILERS THROUGHOUT: I saw this so long ago but loved the premise and really enjoyed it as a comedy even though it's totally off the wall. But it was a good movie, it had funny, fun, characters involved in a rather strange(to put it mildly) situation, and although it's extremely predictable, when one's in the mood for a Genuinely fun, though rather odd, romantic comedy, you could do worse then three of hearts.Three of Hearts didn't get a lot of attention but was, in fact, better then a lot of more popular movies of this genre might be. The plot was kooky as anything but surprisingly worked extremely well, and the mix of performers were great, as they all worked very well together. It also, happily, didn't wind up being cheesy at all because that's always a worry with romantic comedies. But that wasn't a problem here.Of coarse, there is an element of predictability one might expect from a movie such as this. But basically, everything flowed quite nicely. And no matter how predictable the movie, ultimately was, the premise that started the whole thing, was quite original and carried out quite well. Lastly, it's always nice to see one of my favorite actresses-Cherlyn Fenn. All in all this is worth a look if you haven't seen it. My rating is 7 out of 10.

Alright, I gave this film no chance, watched it only because it was on and Joe Jackson did the score and knew I wouldn't even keep it on the whole time, but still... sometimes films I intend to dislike ("Signs" is one) turn out to be quite good. This one was not.William Baldwin, Kelly Lynch and Sherilyn Fenn play three annoying city patrons whose lives intertwine in the fact that Kelly Lynch(the most irritating of them all), a lesbian, broke up with her girlfriend (Fenn) and wants her friend (Baldwin who appears totally bored) to pretend to love her ex so that somehow Ms. Fenn will come racing back to her. Or something like that.Watching this movie is about as exciting as reading the phonebook. The lines are dull; I've already singled out Herr Baldwin, but all of the actors seem rather listless and lackluster; the lighting is annoying; and the score that I tuned into the dumb thing exclusively to hear is HARD to hear(but sounded good) because the sound quality was not too hot, either. Finally, I just gave up watching. What a waste it was.

I saw Three of Hearts cos a friend of mine recommended it, and since I'm not a sucker for romantic comedies...it took a lot of sweet talking on her part to make me watch the movie. Anyway, I finally picked up a copy and actually ended up watching the entire movie with great interest. I thought Sherilyn Fenn looked cute throughout, and Baldwin on occasions, looked reasonably good. However, it was the extremely underrated Kelly Lynch who came out shining on all accounts. The story...Lynch and Fenn are lovers who are going through a temporary seperation, mainly at Fenn's insistence. Lynch is madly in love with Fenn, so she hires Baldwin, who plays a 'male escort' to seduce Fenn, and then break her heart so she could come back to Lynch! Confusing huh?! Well, the plot sounds pretty weird to be true...but hey..you never know!! Anyhow, a thoroughly enjoyable movie, made far better due to excellent work by Kelly Lynch.