Forces of Nature (1999)

★½
Forces of Nature is a Planes, Trains and Automobiles retread, and not a very good one. The plot features two dissimilar characters stuck together on a road trip using a variety of conveyances to get to their destination. In what could have been resolved in a matter of minutes turns into an endless parade of mishaps. That's unfortunate, because Ben Affleck's performance is really good. He takes a weak script and salvages the story somewhat, but eventually he falls victim to the decisions made by writer Marc Lawrence and director Bronwen Hughes. Sandra Bullock, on the other hand, gives what is quite possibly the most irritating performance of her career.

Ben Holmes (Affleck) is getting married to Bridget Cahill (Maura Tierney) in a few days. In New York City, he boards a plane bound for Savannah, Georgia. He has the misfortune of sitting next to Sarah Lewis (Bullock), who's heading home to see her son. She is immediately annoying. When a bird flies into the engine and causes the plane to crash into a barrier, Ben's journey gets more complicated. Forced to team up, Ben and Sarah bum a ride from a stranger who later gets busted for drug possession. Then they hop on an Amtrak train, which should have ended the movie but doesn't due to incredibly stupid writing. When the train stops, Sarah climbs to the top of the car and invites Ben, who hesitates but eventually caves to her incessant pleading. Unbeknownst to them, the cars decouple and get attached to a new engine, which is headed for Chicago.

Sarah is an unpredictable and insufferable bore. She's supposed to be this movie's equivalent of John Candy's Del Griffith, but the movie makes a key error by forgetting Del's human side. He was a bumbling salesman, but he had heart. He got Steve Martin's Neal Page character into difficult situations, but it was never intentional, and he meant well. Sarah is a schemer. She convinces Ben to pretend to be her husband so that they can join a bus full of retirees going to Florida, which is fine, but then she spins a story of how he's also a doctor. If you're going to deceive, don't volunteer too much information. Inevitably, he will be called upon to save a life. Also inevitably, the lie will be exposed.

These complications are intended to add humor, perhaps to channel the vastly superior It Happened One Night, the 1934 screwball comedy starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert as a mismatched pair on a road trip. They eventually fall in love. In Forces of Nature, we suspect something similar. Ben and Sarah spend the night in a laundromat, with her sleeping on some chairs while Ben looks after her. When he looks down to watch her sleep, we see her from his point of view. This is a sure sign that Ben is at least contemplating the possibility of leaving his fiancée. However fleeting, it's a boneheaded thought, because she's been nothing but trouble and he's expressed his frustrations more than once.

To make sure we foresee a potential split, the movie gives us Bridget making out with an old boyfriend after she gets frustrated with Ben's tardiness. This gets us to question Ben's future with her. The scene is not needed because the challenge is Ben's to overcome. He's the one traveling with Sarah, so he must decide what he wants. Bridget's moment of weakness is not relevant and had no business here. Correction. It does serve one purpose. The filmmakers want us to suspect a split is pending, so they give us some indiscretion on both sides in order to solidify their plan, before they pull the rug out from under us. After everything that happened, Sarah encourages Ben to maintain his commitment to Bridget.

Forces of Nature tries to be a whimsical comedy by suggesting that nature is working against Ben, from the hurricane looming off the coast to lightning strikes to hailstorms. I could see this working, but Sarah's presentation hurts the movie, so any themes that might be lurking here are of no help. Due to her personality, Sarah forms virtually no romantic chemistry Ben, which I suppose is the point because they don't end up together at the end, yet the movie still teases us with the possibility, especially by showing us Bridget with her ex, which had no solid foundation. Ben's plane was canceled, and he has a fear of flying, so it's going to take him extra time to get to Savannah. This is not even remotely a good enough reason for her to have to jump in the sack. About the only thing that really deserves praise is the presentation of the weather. The slow-motion raindrops are neat, and Ben and Bridget's scene together as the hurricane makes landfall was extremely well done and deserved to be in a better movie…a much better movie.

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