Just Like in the Movies Movie Review

Just Like in the Movies is a likable independent feature from the directing/screenwriting team of Bram Towbin and Mark Halliday. It also provides an extremely fine role for Jay O. Sanders as Ryan Legrand, private eye. The film is hardly a recruiting movie for those with dreams of exciting and dangerous undercover assignments. Legrand's job strictly involves following husbands and wives who suspect infidelity; a more sordid job is hard to imagine. Legrand is also a definite creep, the world's worst date, and embarrassingly awkward on divorced dad days with his son as well. Somehow, the film invests its protagonist with a few appealing qualities; maybe it has something to do with the fact that he tries so hard and everyone else in the film despises him so thoroughly. Perennial celluloid sidekick Alan Ruck once again plays Legrand's droll sidekick: “Just Like in the Movies!”

1990 98m/C Jay O. Sanders, Alan Ruck, Katherine Borowitz, Michael Jeter, Alex Vincent; D: Bram Towbin, Mark Halliday; W: Bram Towbin, Mark Halliday; C: Peter Fernberger; M: John Hill.