By EWAN McDONALD
(Herald rating: * * * )
As Nicolas Cage plays him in this romantic comedy, Jack Campbell is one of those movie-character businessmen who is ruled by his career. He has no personal life to speak of, is working on Christmas Eve and doesn't bother to return a
phone message from Kate Reynolds (Tea Leoni), his girlfriend from student days.
It's not the first time that's happened. In 1987, Jack flew off for a year in London, even though Kate begged him to stay. She thought if he went they'd never marry, and she was right.
Now, through the paranormal intervention of a taxi driver (Don Cheadle), Jack goes to sleep as a wealthy bachelor and wakes in a parallel time-zone in which he flew back from London, married Kate and they had two children and a dog.
Gradually, Campbell realises that he's now a family man and has the opportunity to catch up with everything he missed by putting his career first. He does have a moment of regret when he finds he's working as a tyre salesman for his father-in-law and tries to talk his way back into the big money in Manhattan.
There's a lot to like about this movie, not the least of which is the two leads, Cage and Leoni. As with so many Hollywood pictures, however, there's a nagging feeling that it has copped out of a strong real-life story and taken the easy sitcom solution.
And a nagging feeling that you might have seen it before, in last year's rather more thoughtful Me Myself I and, to some extent, Demi Moore's Atlantic-crossing Passion of Mind.
Running time: 124 mins
Rental: Today
