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Rated: R; Genres: Comedy, Drama, Romance; With: Nathan Lane, Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer
B+
By Owen Gleiberman
Owen Gleiberman
Owen Gleiberman
Owen Gleiberman is a film critic for EW

FRANKIE & JOHNNY (R) Michelle Pfeiffer plays Frankie, a lonely New York coffee-shop waitress whose hair hangs down in greasy, indifferent tangles. Al Pacino is Johnny, the boisterous new cook who peeks beneath her depression and sees that she's the one for him. The movie falls squarely in the tradition of inspirational Hollywood romance, and most of it isn't terribly surprising. Yet Frankie & Johnny gives Pfeiffer and Pacino room to create warm, expansive characters, and it has one element that feels absolutely fresh: It captures the dull romantic ache people can carry around with them for years. Pfeiffer peels away Frankie's fear of intimacy layer by layer, and Pacino, who starts out amorous and lovably macho, by the end reveals a new, startling tenderness. What's touching about the movie-what makes the two stars' chemistry so right- is that we know Frankie would never take the plunge if she weren't with a guy who loved her this much. B+


Posted Oct 25, 1991
 

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