Molly Ringwald (looking a bit heavy and unhappy) is a general practice lawyer in a seaside town who defends a handsome amnesiac on trial for bigamy and tax evasion. TV-made mystery has a lightly comic, frisky side and a direction with some imagination. Ringwald is well-cast as a somewhat-kooky modern working woman who can't find a good man, although her frumpy clothes and hairstyle make her appear much older than she is--and older than her character has to be. The movie ends up scrambled like an egg, with a cartoonish version of a courtroom trial in the second-half and an iffy final tag that leaves the whole thing feeling a bit pointless. Molly has some choice scenes, and it's good to have her carrying a film again (TV or otherwise), but she's wound up too tight, and might've benefited from some improvisation, a looser director, or just some breathing room to control her tics and exaggerated facial expressions. The flick is a fun time-filler, though a wispy-thin one, without even one foot grounded in some kind of reality. **1/2 from ****
Review of The Wives He Forgot
The Wives He Forgot
(2006 TV Movie)
Frisky mystery-lite with some good twists but a silly second-act...
19 September 2006