Nice chemistry between Sissy Spacek and William Peterson which easily could have been a movie of the week in the era before Lifetime movies came along, only made worthy of the big screen by the presence of the Oscar-winning Spacek. She's a divorced teacher about to be remarried (to equally handsome Brian Kerwin) when her ex-husband Peterson shows up and sent her into panic mode. He abandoned her for one of his dreams ears before and she divorced him in the meantime. Their daughter Olivia Burnette pulls a "Mamma Mia" by sending her dad an anonymous wedding invitation he thinks is from Spacek. Of course, the sparks ignite and this puts a damper and the wedding actually going through.

With familiar names as Mare Winningham (as a friend of Spacek's) and Peter MacNichol as the old rival of the ex and best friend of the groom to be) as well as a very funny cameo by stage and screen veteran Louis Smith as the old school principal, this is a very pleasant slice-of-life comedy that doesn't take a lot of intellect to watch but is amusing as nice time filler. It's nice to say a film where ex-spouses don't spend your time fighting and realize that there was a reason why they fell in love. Life doesn't always work out this way, but the fact that pretty much everybody in this film is a genuinely nice character (even though some of the participants at the bridal shower are rather shrewish) makes it a difficult film not to like. Brunette is very good as the trouble daughter who would like nothing more than for her parents to get back together.

William Petersen is excellent as a thirty-something good ol' boy and absentee husband who is about to grow up a bit as he's forced to face some uncomfortable facts about himself. Sissy Spacek is his newly divorced wife who is about to remarry when he comes barreling back into her life to prevent it....These two would have never gotten married if they had had a good astrologist do their charts in detail; he's very much a Sagittarius, probably with afflicted aspects in his sixth house, whereas she's a dyed in the wool Cancer. They obviously have great physical chemistry but severely conflicting emotional and psychological temperaments and needs. It took her 12 years of anguish to divorce him even though they still love each other. He's trying very hard to win her back and nearly does but ultimately she's more adult then he is and her resistance though nearly crumbling, persists. The film stands as a perceptive and sympathetic study of basically incompatible characters with a knowing and abiding understanding and fondness for each other who will never be able to weld into a viable union.

I caught this film on one of the newer movie channels that run essentially unknown movies from the past. This 1992 completely passed me by at the time. It's so nondescript there isn't much to hang on, other than Sissy Spacek, who was a star at the time. William Petersen was still floundering as a box office draw (a shame),a good decade ahead of his fame on CSI, but a brilliant actor nonetheless.

This film creeps in on you, as you sort of expect a mindless romantic comedy, since it's so light-hearted for the first hour, as Petersen's character employs every trick in the book to try to get his wife back.

The film is very stealthy the way it lures you in with mindless fun and then mild rooting for a man pulling all the romantic stops out to get back his woman, but it just doesn't turn out that way, and is a wonderfully real and thought-provoking film in that sense.

It reminds me a bit of the Wedding Singer, which also covered the topic of an aging ladies man facing realities, though this film isn't sidetracked at its climax.

Then again, the sleepy town everyone is so happy in is supported by a local steel mill that by now, would have shut down, and thrown everyone out of work. Maybe Petersen's Joey character is getting the best outcome anyway. Regardless, Petersen's acting is superb, and you really feel the conflict, pride, and hurt in the trials he goes through to let what was a good wife slip through his fingers, and try to rescue what he can with his daughter.

In the end, what starts as almost a light-hearted farce gets very real and very instructive, and can hit a bit too close to home for any aging Peter Pans. I wouldn't call this escapist fare, but not bad viewing for a man in his late 20s early 30s, which is ironic considering it's something more akin to the lifetime channel. It's message to women is one they know - a steady man is worth marrying. Not exactly a revelation, so I would say this movie is a romantic parable for men - quite a rarity.