Regarding Henry is the kind of shamelessly manipulative pap that really should have remained true to its `Disease of the Week' TV Movie roots. Harrison Ford plays a hotshot lawyer who has little time for his wife and daughter but has to start his life from scratch after being shot and brain damaged. And when I say from scratch, I mean as if he has just been born! He has to learn to identify colours, learn to walk, learn to speak and then rebuild his life and career. The plot employs every single cliché that you could thing of. There's a nice black physiotherapist, his daughter teaches him how to read again, his partners at work don't like him anymore and a few skeletons emerge from his and his wife's lives. But that won't matter because Henry realises that his life before he was shot wasn't so great. He cares for his family much more now and many of the big cases that he won previously, he did so by lying and cheating. And that was very, very wrong damnit!! By now you'll be thinking that I giving this film 1/10, but no. I'm actually giving it 6/10, because for all this calculating schmaltz, Regarding Henry is an entertaining and even compulsively watchable film. This mainly because of the star clout that is involved in it. Ford, away from his action man charisma is surprisingly convincing as the brain damaged Henry, Annette Bening is simply wonderful as his compassionate and sympathetic wife and Bill Nunn is great too as Bradley, Henry's physio. Director Nichols has made far better films both before and after this with The Graduate and Primary Colors, yet he handles the film well enough and Hans Zimmer has produced another great music score. You get the feeling from all the effort put into the film, that these people honestly thought that they were making heavy and profound. On that score they are seriously deluded. But all the same, Regarding Henry is quite an effective family drama and if you ignore how cheap it is, you could even have a lump in your throat and a tear in your eye.
Review of Regarding Henry
