Romancefest 2018: He Said, She Said

1991’s HE SAID, SHE SAID, directed by Ken Kwapis and Marisa Silver has an interesting premise: what if we saw a romantic comedy from both the male’s point of view and the female’s point of view, comparing and contrasting how the two view the story differently as it unfolds. Rumor has it, the duo of directors even directed their gender’s sequences, with Kwapis handling the story from Kevin Bacon’s point of view and Silver handling it from Elizabeth Perkins’.

Bacon and Perkins star as journalists competing for a coveted spot writing editorials for a Blatimore paper. The editor of the paper (Nathan Lane) hits on the idea of simply publishing both columns, as Bacon and Perkins have a knack for arguing opposite sides of a point of view, and eventually this becomes a TV show, where the two hosts duke it out with their opinions in prime time.

Of course the two fall in love, and that complicates things. Bacon’s a conservative ladies’ man and Perkins is a more liberal Modern Woman. Baco also has a hot ex-lover (Sharon Stone) waiting in the wings to swoop in at any given moment. The middle section of the movie is supposed to be sparks flying while two smart, ambitious people attempt to avoid giving in to each other’s affections, but instead it kind of falls flat. It’s not Bacon and Perkins’ fault, though.

Ironically, the fault lies with the seemingly promising premise. The way the premise is exploited in this movie is all wrong. Instead of cutting back and forth between the two characters’ differing points of view, the movie plays about half of its two hour running time from Bacon’s point of view, then after an hour switches to Perkins’ point of view, and we get to sit through it all over again. So, if you didn’t read a synopsis that explains this premise to you, you’d have a big let down at the half way point as you suddenly realize you have to sit through the movie again.

Adding to this problem is the fact that their two points of view aren’t that different, and in the moments that they are, they differ in ways that don’t really say anything about women’s and men’s differing experiences in relationships. They just differ in ways that make you wonder, “How come?” instead of saying, “Ah, ha!”