Missing the point

The best fairy tales are stories of beauty and wonder, full of fantastic characters who, somehow, are also believable. In a scene from Bed of Roses, Lewis (Christian Slater), a florist, listens to children's story time at the library with a look of enraptured innocence. Lisa (Mary Stuart Masterson), on the other hand, is a consummate careerist caught up in deals. Lewis, wandering the streets at night (as those romantics are prone to do), catches sight of Lisa in a moment of sadness. Moved, he delivers an anonymous bouquet to her workplace, and she, driven to discover who sent it, finds him out. Together they spend a day delivering flowers (glowingly portrayed as the best job in the world, because everyone is happy to see you) and a night of rapturous love. Breakfast in bed and countless bouquets of sterling roses follow. So much for beauty and wonder; all this fairy tale needs is a trace of believability. Do men like Lewis really exist? If so, where can I get one?

Okay, Lewis and Lisa are deep in love, but the movie is only half over. Since even roses have thorns (according to Lisa's philosophy, they ought to, otherwise they're too perfect), you know something's bound to happen. Lisa is frightened by their closeness and by her own growing vulnerability. After avoiding questions about her family and background for several months, she admits to Lewis that she was abandoned by her natural parents. She describes her adoptive father, saying, "He drank, and he um . . . " That "um," suggestive of sexual abuse, explains Lisa's fear of intimacy. Fairy tales have their dark sides, too.

Or at least they should. Lisa's troubled childhood ought to make the character more interesting and sympathetic; in fact, it provides a glib explanation for her actions without revealing any of her emotions. Masterson does what she can, but Michael Goldenberg's screenplay lacks depth. We're likewise meant to understand that Lewis wants to play knight-in-shining-armor to Masterson's sad princess because he was once a workaholic just like her but changed his wife died in childbirth. Lisa's trauma plays like a mediocre TV-movie; Lewis's transformation gets sentimentalized.

And though Masterson and Slater are no strangers to unlikely romances, Bed of Roses lacks the quirky charm of Benny and Joon or Untamed Heart. Lewis is a sensitive guy, and Lisa is the kind of gal who needs a sensitive guy, but the film is missing an essential element of the classical romances that serve as its inspiration: a sense of the inevitability of their love. They're brought together by mere chance, not by destiny. When they break up, you don't shed any tears.

The problem might be that the movie's so pretty to look at. To the old actor's adage "Don't work with children or animals" we should perhaps add "flora," for the flowers threaten to steal the show. From the greenery of Lewis's shop to his gorgeous rooftop garden, production designer Stephen McCabe and floral designer Chris Bassett have created a fantastical array. In fact, the entire production is visually stunning. The changing of the seasons in New York is lovingly chronicled, à la When Harry Met Sally; one romantic shot of the couple sitting on a bench overlooking the Brooklyn Bridge is taken straight from Manhattan.

Pamela Segall injects some vinegar into all this sweetness as Lisa's best friend, Kim, who's always ready with a sly and wise rejoinder; but she too gets caught up in the film's tendency to hit you over the head with its metaphors. Kim, a teacher, casts a troubled girl in the lead role of the Christmas play -- whereupon both the girl and Lisa (who's in the audience) realize they can be princesses. Goldenberg is trying to explore what happens after the happily-ever-after ending, but what follows happily-ever-after here is, after a few intervening bumps, just more of the same. Ultimately the film plays like a Disneyized version of a fairy tale: simplified, sweetened, safe, a bed of roses with neither thorns nor soil.