This is a really cute little romantic comedy. The story revolves around a young history teacher, Kate, who's afraid of flying but forces herself to hop on a plane for Paris to try and win back her fiancé, Charlie, who has dumped her for a gorgeous French woman. However, her seat mate on the plane happens to be a charming French crook named Luc, who uses the unsuspecting Kate to smuggle his stolen diamond necklace for him. Then, casting himself as an expert in affairs of the heart, he resolves to help Kate win back her man, later complicated by the fact that he falls for her himself.
Their adventures across France, from Paris to Cannes, in pursuit of the fiancé and his new girlfriend, make for some pretty amusing scenes. The plot is livened up by the repercussions of Luc's larcenous tricks, little sub-plots with a fellow con artist and a cop who owes him a favour. My sole complaint with this movie is a couple of unnecessary f-words and a fair bit of profanity, especially on Kate's part (taking the Lord's name in vain), reflective of the screenwriters' laziness in avoiding clever dialogue in these scenes.
Meg Ryan is her usual cute, bubbly, rather ditsy self in the role of Kate and Timothy Hutton is suitably obnoxious and despicable as Charlie, the fiancé who dumped her. However, the real star of this film is Kevin Kline, who puts genuine charm into the role of this rakishly endearing thief, Luc, and demonstrates an extremely credible French accent, in my opinion. His entire persona here makes it difficult to believe that Kline isn't really French. He must have had a fantastic language coach! Also, there is great on screen chemistry between Meg Ryan and Kevin Kline.
It's a delightful, light hearted film, a good date movie, and not necessarily just a chick flick as my husband enjoyed it too.
