‘The Accidental Husband’ left out of theaters on purpose
‘The Accidental Husband’ starring Uma Thurman, Jeffrey Dean
Morgan and Colin Firth
I first heard about
”
The Accidental Husband
”
two summers ago when it was publicized as having an August 2008
release date. The film stars Uma Thurman as an uptight doctor of
relationships, Colin Firth as her uptight publisher/fiance, and
Jeffrey Dean Morgan as the wacky firefighter who gets in the way.
The movie looked funny and I filed it away as a movie I wanted to
see when it came out. But August came and went and the movie never
came out.
‘The Accidental Husband’ left out of theaters on purpose
‘The Accidental Husband’ starring Uma Thurman, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Colin Firth
I first heard about “The Accidental Husband” two summers ago when it was publicized as having an August 2008 release date. The film stars Uma Thurman as an uptight doctor of relationships, Colin Firth as her uptight publisher/fiance, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan as the wacky firefighter who gets in the way. The movie looked funny and I filed it away as a movie I wanted to see when it came out. But August came and went and the movie never came out.
Then September came and went, and the movie wasn’t released. After a while I stopped watching for it. I might have missed its DVD release except that Netflix has a feature where you can add a movie that hasn’t yet been released and it will automatically add the film to the queue when it does come out. When I added “The Accidental Husband,” it still didn’t have a release date on it. So nearly 15 months after the movie was supposed to be out, it made its way into the queue.
It happens from time to time that a movie’s release will be delayed. That usually happens when another studio announces a big blockbuster to open on the same date. It is pretty rare, however, for a trailer to run in theaters and then for a movie to be delayed for more than a year just to come out on DVD.
I wondered with “The Accidental Husband” what could have been the reason. None of its stars were involved in any scandals. It fit into the romantic comedy genre that is often popular fare in the summer months. It seemed to have a funny spin in it.
The premise of the movie is that Dr. Emma Lloyd (Uma Thurman) is a psychologist with a radio talk show and a book deal who preaches that relationships should be predictable, not passionate. She has a compatibility test that she says measures how successful a marriage will be. She and Richard (Colin Firth) have a high compatibility.
But when Emma takes a call from a listener who is having doubts about her upcoming wedding, she sets in motion something that will change her life. She advises the woman based on the answers to a few questions to back out of the wedding. The woman’s fiance, Patrick Sullivan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), ends up heart broken. But instead of trying to win back Sofia (Justina Machado), he instead puts all his energy into getting revenge on Dr. Lloyd.
A teen computer whiz that lives in his apartment building hacks into the New York public records and creates a marriage license for Emma with Patrick listed as her husband. When Emma goes to file for a marriage license with Richard, she is informed that she is already married. Emma searches for Patrick Sullivan, her “accidental husband.”
It’s clear that there is a bit of passion lacking between Emma and Richard when his biggest worry is not that the surprise marriage to another man will delay their own nuptials, but that it could be bad for her book release if it ever gets out.
When she tracks down Patrick, he doesn’t let on that he knows who she is or what he has done. He does everything in his power to delay signing annulment papers. He gets her so drunk he has to carry her to his apartment where she passes out for the night. He follows her to a wedding cake tasting where he pretends to be her fiance Richard. He even shows up at an important work event for Emma, again posing as her fiance. But very quickly, Patrick stops hating Emma for ruining his engagement and he starts to fall for her. And as in all predictable movies, Emma starts to question her engagement to Richard who has about as much personality as a rock.
The movie had potential with a decent cast. Colin Firth does uptight British guy so well, and Uma Thurman showed that she could pull off the librarian look in “My Super Ex-Girlfriend,” but neither of them deliver in this movie.
Once I started watching the movie, I realized why it was relegated to a quiet DVD release – it’s just not very good. The funniest scenes in the movie were all those that showed up in the trailer. The acting was mediocre, the storyline was predictable and the characters were just not very well developed. It required the viewers to fill in an awful lot of blanks to come up with some motivation for the characters.
