Alas, this touching and fascinating character is mired in theworst kind of sitcom - a serious one (seriocom?). "The Object of MyAffection" deals with some real issues and has scenes that work, butyou can see the wheels of the plot turning so clearly that you doubtthe characters have much freedom to act on their own.
The story involves a social worker named Nina (Jennifer Aniston)and a first-grade teacher named George (Paul Rudd). Nina is engagedto a creep named Vince (John Pankow), and George is living with aliterary critic named Robert (Tim Daly), who, like all Bernard Shawexperts, can afford a BMW convertible and a luxurious apartment inManhattan. At a dinner party, Nina finds out that Robert is leavingGeorge, and tells George - alas, before Robert has. George iscrushed, but soon has moved into Nina's Brooklyn apartment, wherethey will live as good friends.Then Nina gets pregnant. Vince, the father, keeps talking about"our" baby until Nina announces it is her baby and she has no plansto marry Vince, and Vince stalks out after declaring "I never want tosee you again," a line that sounds for all the world like ascreenwriter's convenience to get him out of the cluttered plot for ascene or two. Nina, who really likes George, asks him to share thefathering: They could be a couple in everything but sex. Georgeagrees, but then he falls for Paul (Amo Gulinello), and Nina feelshurt and jealous.All of this promising material is dealt with on that level wherecharacters are not quite allowed to be as perceptive and intelligentas real people might be in the same circumstances. That's becausethey're shuttled hither and yon by a plot that requires a falsecrisis and false dawn (Nina and George dance to "You Were Meant forMe") before the real crisis and real dawn. At least we're spared alive childbirth scene, although we do get the Listening to theEmbryo's Heartbeat Scene.Aniston and Rudd are appealing together, although Pankow'scrudely written role puts him through bewildering personality shifts.But then, suddenly, a character walks in from nowhere and becomes themovie's center of interest. This is the aging drama critic Rodney,played by Oscar nominee Nigel Hawthorne of "The Madness of KingGeorge." He is gay, and Paul is his young protege. They do not havesex, Paul makes clear to George. But Rodney clearly loves the youngman, and there are a couple of scenes in which he says and doesnothing, and achieves a greater emotional effect than is reached byany dialogue in the movie.He also offers Nina hard-won advice: In the long run, herarrangement with George will not work. "Don't fix your life so thatyou're left alone just at the middle of it," he says, and we sensethat the movie has quieted down and found its focus and purpose. Youask yourself, what would the whole film have been like if it had beenwritten and acted at this level? The answer, sadly, is - not muchlike "The Object of My Affection."
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