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Inspired by an actual incident, this unassuming, wonderfully good-natured romantic comedy tells the story of a New York City street cop named Charlie (Nicolas Cage) who makes a promise to a coffee-shop waitress named Yvonne (Bridget Fonda) that will change both their lives. One day after coffee, Charlie is embarrassed to discover he doesn't have money for a tip, so he tells Yvonne that he'll share half of his winnings if the lottery ticket he's holding comes up a winner. Sure enough, he wins the jackpot--a whopping $4 million payoff--and Charlie's wife, Muriel (Rosie Perez), goes ballistic when he tells her about his deal with Yvonne. From this point,
It Could Happen to You follows Charlie's dilemma as he is forced to decide the proper course of action, and director Andrew Bergman smoothly incorporates a gentle love story into this amusing crisis of conscience. Fonda and Cage have an easygoing chemistry that adds a pleasant touch to the movie's fairy-tale plot, and the story's kindhearted sentiment is never so thick that it becomes sticky-sweet or artificial. As feel-good comedies go, this one's a class act.
--Jeff Shannon
From The New Yorker
The main characters in Andrew Bergman's sweet-spirited romantic farce are a cop named Charlie (Nicolas Cage) and a diner waitress named Yvonne (Bridget Fonda)-a pair of generous, honest, kindhearted working-class lovers who might have seemed too good to be true even in one of Frank Capra's sunny populist comedies. Bergman treats their impossible virtuousness as a species of screwball-comedy idiosyncrasy, and makes us believe in them. Cage gazes at Fonda with his characteristic look of stricken canine ardor, Fonda flashes back one of her radiantly loopy grins, and we smile at both the rightness and the weirdness of their union. Rosie Perez, as Charlie's beady-eyed, greedy wife, gets most of the big laughs, but it's the relationship between the cop and the waitress that gives the picture its distinctive comic spirit. The joy that Charlie and Yvonne take in doing good has the erotic quality of a shared secret, a ticklish pleasure that only they know about. Also with Seymour Cassel, Wendell Pierce, Stanley Tucci, and Isaac Hayes. Screenplay by Jane Anderson. -Terrence Rafferty
Copyright © 2006
The New Yorker