Maybe it's because "Moonlight and Valentino" is a "women's picture" and I just don't get it. But for me, this is just another "Steel Magnolias" wannabe that never clicks.
Written by Ellen Simon (daughter of Neil Simon), who adapted her own stage play, "Moonlight and Valen-tino" is one of those quip-laden tragedies that tries to be an ensemble piece but instead just feels like a series of disconnected vignettes filled with moments that are too cute for words.
The cast is quite appealing, however, with Elizabeth Perkins in the nominal lead as a college English professor who becomes a widow when her husband is hit by a car while jogging. The central theme has Perkins' friends and family attempting to help her work through her grief.
Perkins' best friend is Whoopi Goldberg, whose own marriage (to unbilled Peter Coyote) is falling apart; her sister is Gwyneth Paltrow, an emotionally unstrung and aimless woman who needs guidance; and her ex-stepmother is Kathleen Turner, a meddling, take-charge business executive who interferes with Perkins and Paltrow's personal lives, though she has long been divorced from their father.
The four of them bicker, fight, weep, laugh and ask intimate questions of one another as each tries to gain some insight into her own life. Paltrow asks Perkins for sexual advice ("When do you moan?") and wants to know how she looks in the nude, Goldberg considers getting a tattoo on her thigh to liven up her marriage and Turner hires a house painter (played by rock star Jon Bon Jovi) to put a fresh coat on Perkins' home, hoping, of course, that a romantic spark will ignite.
But it all seems like so much artifice. Attempts at cleverness are too clever, characters' quirky traits seem contrived and here the situations are just too obviously a writer's conceit. And it all ends with a ritual face-painting ceremony in a cemetery, where, after significant, heart-tugging speeches, it rains. Right.
Rated R: Sex, nudity, language.