The Secret Life of Archie's Wife (1990)

Real-life husband and wife Michael Tucker and Jill Eikenberry (L.A. Law) starred last season in Assault and Matrimony, an exceptionally bad TV-movie comedy. The Secret Life of Archie's Wife is a teeny bit better than that, if only because its farce isn't quite as frenetic.

Eikenberry is kidnapped by Tucker, who plays an earnest incompetent on the run from loan sharks. Eikenberry isn't entirely unhappy about the situation, since her husband, Archie (Ray Wise, Twin Peaks' Leland Palmer), is a cold creep who's having an affair. On the road, Eikenberry and Tucker fall in love, and it seems as if director James Frawley was trying for a TV version of It Happened One Night. But in this case, the dialogue is trite, and instead of Clark Gable, Michael Tucker talks (and at one point, in false whiskers, sort of looks) like Yosemite Sam. Eikenberry's character is named Bunny Brown, but for all her cartoonish implausibility, she might as well be Bugs Bunny. C-

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