hy can't Ruby Weaver (Tomei) just meet a normal guy for once? Her therapist (Taylor) tells her that her relationships keep failing because she's a "fixer"; she keeps trying to "fix" everyone she dates without paying enough attention to her own needs. That's why this Sam Deed guy (D'Onofrio) Ruby's just met is making life such a roller coaster.
Sam's certainly got a fair amount going for him—he's kind, attentive, romantic, got a good sense of humor and an okay job and he's really into her. He can be pretty weird, though. He knows a ton of languages but doesn't know how to work a record player. Stories he tells about his life before they met seem a bit off. He's got a barcode tattoo on his arm. He occasionally gets these "spells" where he becomes disoriented and sports a thousand-yard stare. And he's deathly afraid of small dogs.
Despite all of Sam's eccentricities and Ruby's insecurities, though, things go swimmingly until Ruby can no longer bear all of the strange, unanswered questions in their relationship. After she threatens to break up with him, however, the answers Ruby gets from Sam are far from what she she'd expected.
Sam did recently move to New York from Dubuque, Iowa, just as he's been telling her, but the Dubuque he's from is on the Atlantic coast. That's because in the year 2470 (that's A.D.), the year he's come from, the ice caps have long since melted. And even though "backtravel" had just recently been outlawed in his time, he was able to bribe his way through, buying himself passage to and a new identity in the past.
So while Ruby is flattered by Sam's claim that he traveled back in time because of an "old" photograph he found of her, that he came all this way to find her, she's far from believing any of it. Sam's a great guy and all, but isn't he crazy? Can she live with that? And even despite his "coming out," it still seems like Sam's holding something back. Maybe her therapist can help.
Audience appeal is no Accident
With the smartest screenplay since Memento, some terribly sharp direction and some incredibly funny and moving performances, Happy Accidents puts a spin on the romantic comedy and the time-travel love story that can leave viewers reeling.
In plot as well as in style, this 1999 Brad Anderson (Session 9) work is an obvious homage to Chris Marker's 1964 classic La Jetée, but isn't nearly as serious. It's a movie about the quirky ups and downs of present-day relationships as much as (if not more than) it is about time travel. The film's science-fiction aspects are explored almost entirely through language, through dialogue (and what dialogue it is), which is not to say that this movie isn't filled with some great speculative concepts. (There are some great genre jokes, too—like how Ruby and her friends call their communal shoebox of pictures of former boyfriends the "Ex-Files.")
The relationship of the two main characters is a wonderfully organic and dynamic thing, thanks to some absolutely top-form acting by both Tomei and D'Onofrio. It's as easy and rewarding to feel with these characters as it is to feel for them. They both come across as very real (and therefore very appealing) people, even if one of them is supposed to be from the 25th century.
Appropriately enough, the narrative structure is a somewhat disjointed one—the better part of the tale is told in a series of flashbacks, framed by Ruby's sessions with her therapist and developed by the many conversations she has with her best friend, Gretchen (Dajani; who's got some great, wry lines like "You're so old-fashioned, he's from the future—what the hell do you guys see in each other?"). And even though, as this is a romantic comedy, there's the potential for predictability, Happy Accidents' brilliantly told story keeps viewers guessing (especially in regard to Sam's—as well as Ruby's—sanity, and therefore his veracity), right up until the very end.
