In the movie, the characters are played by Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson, and just by seeing their names on the marquee you'd figure the movie would have to be electrifying. But it's not. Here is the story of two people with no chemistry, played by two actors with great chemistry. The only way they can get into character is to play against the very things we like them for.
Streep seems dowdy and querulous. Nicholson seems to be a shallow creep. Their romance never really seems real, never seems important and permanent. So when he starts fooling around, we don't feel the enormity of the offense. There's not much in their marriage for him to betray.
The story: Rachel meets Mark and it's love at first sight, but it's not the kind of loin-churning passion we felt when Nicholson met Kathleen Turner in "Prizzi's Honor." It's more of a low-grade fever, something to be treated with aspirin - or marriage.
On her wedding day, Rachel takes to the bedroom of her father's apartment and refuses to emerge for hours. Her reluctance is touching at first, then comic and finally annoying. After the ceremony, they move into a handyman special in Georgetown (affordable because it recently had a fire), and the joke is that the renovations to the house will last longer than their marriage.
There are scenes set in the thickets of Washington gossip, where Catherine O'Hara plays the reigning bitch goddess, and other scenes of domesticity, as when Nicholson wonders why the carpenters have not supplied a doorway from the kitchen to the rest of the house.
Here and there, we see glimmers of the greatness of both Nicholson and Streep, who on an ordinary day with a decent script can act circles around anybody. There's a scene in a maternity ward where Streep comes out of anesthesia and turns to see Nicholson standing there holding their baby. She asks if it's theirs, and the goofy grin on his face is a moment of pure joy.
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