Northern Exposure and I'll Fly Away, two shows created by Joshua Brand, have set the new and higher quality standards for television drama in 1990s. When Joshua Brand tried to emulate his television success in the realms of feature films results were less than stellar, judging by his 1995 romantic comedy A Pyromaniac's Love Story.
The protagonist of the film is Sergio (played by John Leguizamo), young man who works in the pastry shop owned by kind-hearted Mr. Linzer (played by Armin Mueller-Stahl). The love of Sergio's life is Hattie (played by Sadie Frost) who dreams about world travel, something Sergio is unable to provide with his meagre salary. One night Mr. Linzer confesses that the pastry shop is on the edge of bankruptcy and asks Sergio to help him burn it for insurance money. Sergio can't decide what to do and when the pastry shop burns anyway, he is confronted with another offer, this time from wealthy Mr. Lumpke (played by Richard Crenna). In exchange for 25,000 US$ Sergio should confess arson to police and thus cover for real arsonist - Lumpke's son Garet (played by William Baldwin) who had torched the pastry shop driven by intense love for Stephanie (played by Erika Eleniak).
Diverse cast and setting that resembles early 20th Century Central Europe more than modern day Northern America should make A Pyromaniac's Love Story different than standard romantic comedies from Hollywood. Unfortunately, despite all the attempts to make this film "quirky", Brand simply can't overcome main problem of Morgan Ward's script - it simply isn't funny. The only joke in film is repeated over and over again, while actors try to compensate for the lack of humour by making grimaces and speaking with "exotic" accents. At the end, even the most patient of all viewers would be little impressed with this film that wasted one of the most intriguing movie titles in recent memory.
RATING: 2/10 (-)
(Note: The text in its original form was posted in Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.films.reviews on February 19th 2004)
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