User Reviews

I came across this, and had never heard of it before, but was interested because both Teri Garr and Sam Elliott are pretty good in anything, and have been for years. Also Garr was supposedly the main character of the story, which was highly unusual for her. Even in some of her biggest roles, like in Tootsie and Young Frankenstein, she was nowhere near the main role of the film. So that piqued my curiosity. So I was somewhat surprised when the biggest part of the story was Sam Elliott's' character. They play charming and humorous criminal investigators, and are appealing, but I didn't think there was very much sexual appeal between them, which they needed to be successful like on Moonlighting. It's kind of fun to imagine what might have been, if it had been picked up as a regular series, but oh well. It's appealing enough to watch maybe once every few years, especially to remember Ms Garr when she was younger and not ill.

Kinda wish some network had picked it up as a series. It wasn't too bad, as Sam Elliot and Teri Garr are very watchable. Because it appeared to be intended as a pilot for a series that was never made, much of the movie is devoted to getting to know the characters, and establishing their working relationship. The dialog is somewhat witty, light-hearted, with its share of sexual innuendo and more than its share of similes. There's obviously some attraction between them, even at this stage, which might have gotten better in the series, but they didn't do the nasty.

Not much to the plotlines (two apparently unrelated cases). Thomas Haden Church comes in about half way through, and adds more fun, and you know he'd end up a series regular, too, as an active-duty cop. He plays the serious ambitious cop but does it humorously.

As a series, however, the writers (which hopefully would have included Joseph Wambaugh) would have been forced to create meaty cases for our three protagonists to solve...character development is fine, but involving them in crime-fighting would have enriched their individual characters. And while this movie showed the lighter side, we'd also have required the adverse and dramatic to flesh out their characters, too.

All in all, not a bad effort with a handsome cast...sigh, what could it have been?

This TV film starts out just fine. Your standard boozer ex-cop with a heart of gold gets hired by a "dame" for a little work. The case sounds remotely interesting (follow the husband of a rich client). Setting is great (Palm Springs, or at least Riverside County). Eliot is great (although repetitive after a while). Terry is wonderful (although she's not given enough to work with). Then Church shows up. His character is too giddy and doesn't really do anything for the movie except a bad comic relief in a film that already has a 50 puns/cracks/allusions per minute. The subplot about the fleeing Mexican starts to get much more interesting. Then we even get some action and a slow film starts to speed up. Now Barry is called in to help with the case. His character is good on paper (an ex-cop who's been ridden with guilt for accidentally shooting a boy while on duty, after which he was discharged). Problem is that he is way too overbearing for a movie that up to his scenes was pretty light. Good thing is that you do kinda start to care for him before the film is over. Now the story stops to give a little rom/com sultry situations for Sam and Terry. By this point the amount of jokes, catchphrases, innuendos and all kind of dialog effects is getting ridiculous. Sem apparently has a form of turrets, only he has to say a metaphor or a jokey comparison with every sentence. We also forget about the plot. However, this is still the last good part in this film. What follows is an implausible if not preposterous resolution of the husband's role in everything (all done just for Barry's character to have a "message" purpose). Next is the resolution of the Mexican's role which is not bad, but seems to be from a completely different movie (with it's extremely dark tone) and also suffers from a huge dialog exposition. Finally we go back to our detective characters who in the end had no real purpose (except Graves for a "message" reason) and are now more developed for an inch or two. I guess the series is set up. When does it start? Oh, it doesn't? There is no show? Of course not. Yet, the ending is almost like the end of some 90ies light cop show episode...

The on/off romance between Sam and Terry is not bad, but the story suffers for it. The dialog is sometimes plane stupid. Especially the last bits of it where Eliot's character tries to explain to Terry's what he had learned from all this (and explain to us indirectly, why the film has this title). Some charm, drama and even comedy are in this film, only they are allover the place, like in a kitchen sink method. Something hits the spot, and other misses it completely ("I've been eating raw lizards." "You have any lizards under your house?"). Character of the guy that confesses everything is also ridiculous and only there to be plot convenient.

Not much else to say. If you (really) like the actors see this (Garr did a great job here). Direction and writing don't surpass episodes of the series from the title of this comment but do get inferior occasionally. The story is not worth your time, and there's a red herring too many, with a very disappointing (and ridiculously ordinary) conclusion. Light mystery buddy film, with a few dark scenes, not much mystery and no buddies.