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Chicago Sun-Times
Married To It
03/26/1993
By Roger Ebert

"Married to It" tells the story of three couples, thrown together by chance at a school function, who become friendly and help each other weather life's vicissitudes. One couple is rich and newlywed, one is made of long-married former hippies, and one is young and having troubles. It's sort of like those arithmetic problems about A, B and C, where they all have two-gallon buckets but when C gets to the top of the hill he discovers that his bucket has been leaking at a rate of two pints an hour. "Married to It" has its heart in the right place, and wants desperately to shed light and sympathy on the challenges of modern marriage, but the screenplay marches from scene to scene as if solving a jigsaw puzzle. It's hard to juggle six major and several minor characters in a story that wants to say something meaningful, but other movies have done a better job - "Parenthood," for example, with three generations of an extended family.

Couple A (Cybill Shepherd and Ron Silver) are rich. She's his attractive new trophy wife, none too pleased that a daughter from an earlier marriage is moping about in a state of perpetual discontent. Couple B (Beau Bridges and Stockard Channing) have been married for a long time, after a classic '60s start that involved sex, drugs and rock and roll. Their family leads a shabby but comfortable lifestyle. Couple C (Mary Stuart Masterson and Robert Sean Leonard) are starting out. She's a school counselor, given a broom closet for an office, and he's an up-and-coming young securities analyst. They all meet at a school parent-teacher function, and get shanghaied onto a committee. Meeting over dinner to make plans, they begin to share confidences, and find they get along. So one dinner party turns into three, and along the way a lot of underlying difficulties get revealed, and they find they can care about each other and help each other. Such discoveries were once routine in American life, but now, I guess, when three professional couples take time out from their busy schedules to express ordinary human sympathy, it's exceptional enough to inspire a movie.

The performers are asked to do what they've done in other movies, and do it as expected: Shepherd as the cool, aloof beauty; Silver as the fast-talking wheeler-dealer with a conscience; Bridges and Channing as solid types with a twinkle in their eyes; Leonard as an earnest young man, Masterson tortured by her integrity. We can more or less predict what will happen to their characters the moment we see how the roles were cast, and although the movie has a warm last-reel reverse, we're mostly right. A few scenes stand out, one in particular between Masterson and Leonard that shows the growth of real caring. But Channing's big blowup against Bridges seems unmotivated and unreasonable. And a subplot involving Leonard's troubles at work is so artificial and contrived the actors seem to be reading their lines over each other's shoulders. "Married to It" was filmed in 1991, but got shelved as part of the big Orion Pictures financial reorganization. At one point it seemed destined to go directly to TV and the video stores. That would have been appropriate.

Washington Post
Married to It
By Desson Howe
March 26, 1993

To get a feel for "Married to It," you should know the married couples involved. So meet:

• Upscale yuppies Cybill Shepherd and Ron Silver.
• Ex-hippies Beau Bridges and Stockard Channing.
• Iowa childhood sweethearts Robert Sean Leonard and Mary Stuart Masterson.

In director Arthur Hiller's comedy, the New York couples become rapidly acquainted when they're obliged to plan a school pageant. Channing, head of the parents association, recruits glamour-banker Shepherd, whose stepdaughter Donna Vivino (Silver's child from a previous marriage) attends the school. Channing also pulls in school psychologist Masterson, who offers to host a dinner to plan the event.

From this stirring beginning a movie is born, a very dull movie. They wouldn't even show this on a plane. At that Masterson dinner, six cardboard stereotypes stare each other in the face and struggle to make conversation. Masterson's husband Leonard is a junior stockbroker on Wall Street. Silver is a toy manufacturer who loves sleek cars and his daughter. Shepherd is a snotty investment banker with a heart of ice. Bridges and Channing work in the city's social services department.

They never get around to discussion of the pageant, which destroys all hope of a premature conclusion. In fact, avoiding the matter becomes the running "joke," as they hold another dinner, at Shepherd's seven-fireplace Manhattan spread; then another at Bridges and Channing's sprawling mess of a place.

But during these meetings, and in between, they become increasingly (and inexplicably) involved in each other's lives. In different stages of couple-ness, they all suffer relationship turbulence. Shepherd can't get along with stepdaughter Vivino and threatens divorce. After 15 years, Bridges and Channing have lost their spark. Meanwhile, Leonard finds himself at the center of a publicized financial scandal -- which strains his relationship with Masterson. The men get together to talk about the women. The women get together to talk about the men. There is pain, rage and anxiety. There is anguish, grief and disgust. Unfortunately, most of it comes from the audience.

One only has to recall Woody Allen's "Husbands and Wives," another farce involving multiple couples, to see how far "Married" has to go to be . . . funny. It must be charitably said that the performers do their utmost with the innocuous scraps scriptwriter Janet Kovalcik has thrown them. Bridges makes an amusingly shaggy '60s survivor, who suddenly spews a torrent of anachronistic anti-Nixon venom at a show-and-tell appearance at his embarrassed son's class. Tight-lipped Silver has a tremendous knack for timing. He should try a comedy after this. As for Shepherd, she occasionally gets in some quippy, post-"Moonlighting" zingers -- even though her character remains functionally dead. This movie is one case in which it would have been better to cut and run than try to save the marriage.

Magill's Survey of Cinema
Married To It
By Catherine R. Springer

Abstract:
Three very different couples (Beau Bridges and Stockard Channing, Robert Sean Leonard and Mary Stuart Masterson, and Ron Silver and Cybill Shepherd) become fast friends while they work together planning a children's school pageant with a 1960's theme.

Summary:
American films have been known to glamorize many things, but marriage is not one of them. In such films as The War Of The Roses (1989) and Husbands And Wives (1992), matrimony is portrayed more as a descent into anguish than as a joyful, life-fulfilling bond. Rare are the films that choose the subject of marriage as a focus, and even rarer are the ones that place wedlock in a favorable light. Married To It is an example of a film that dares to be optimistic about marriage, even hopeful. In these days of divorce, Married To It serves as a guide to survival with a lifelong mate. Although there are times when the story gets lost in the message, Married To It comes through loud and clear.

Director Arthur Hiller is best known for the sentimental favorite Love Story (1970), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director. Married To It does not attempt to match Love Story's emotional power, but that is partly attributable to its generation, not to its director. What went over big in the early 1970's would not necessarily succeed in the 1990's, and Married To It attempts to be realistic, not emotional. Yet, at the same time, it still manages to tell a tale of love between two people--or, in this case, six people.

Married To It is about the trials and tribulations of three very different married couples in New York City. Leo and Claire (Ron Silver and Cybill Shepherd) are madly in love with each other, but each has a severe distraction: For Claire, it is her work; for Leo, it is his thirteen-year-old temperamental daughter from his previous marriage, Lucy (Donna Vivino). Claire, who works fourteen-hour days and gladly flaunts her wealth and success, refuses to compete with Lucy for Leo's attention. Leo, for his part, is utterly devoted to Lucy, despite the fact that Lucy hates Claire. Like most thirteen-year-olds, Lucy wants her parents together and sees Claire as the outsider who ripped them apart.

It is Lucy, in fact, who brings together the three couples who make up the focus of Married To It, as Leo persuades Claire to help out with the annual pageant at Lucy's school in hopes of bringing stepdaughter and stepmother together. The pageant is coordinated by Iris Morden (Stockard Channing), whose two teenage sons attend Lucy's school.

Iris is married to John (Beau Bridges). Former 1960's activists, Iris and John have trouble adjusting to the 1990's. Although they have survived fifteen years of marriage and two children, the spark is definitely gone. As they connect with both Claire and Leo, as well as with young newlyweds Chuck and Nina Bishop (Robert Sean Leonard and Mary Stuart Masterson), they rediscover what commitment is all about.

Chuck and Nina were childhood sweethearts back in Iowa. Idealistic and ambitious, Chuck lands a prime position as a stockbroker in New York City and learns that he has to be quick-witted as well as quick on his feet to survive in the big city. Nina becomes part of the trio of pageant planners when her new job in New York is as the school's psychologist. The troubled Lucy becomes one of her regular patients, as Nina's friendship slowly helps to bring Lucy out of her angry shell.

Brought initially together by the planning of the pageant, the three couples quickly become friends and find in one another soul mates and fellow voyagers on the turbulent path of marriage. Although each couple has its own set of problems and solutions, the common link that binds them is significant.

When Chuck is accused publicly of illegal stock activity, the strength of his new marriage is challenged. At first, Chuck shuts Nina out, wanting to protect her from the pain of public scrutiny. He eventually realizes, however, that marriage is a partnership--through good times and bad. The friendships are tested as well, as both Leo and John have their doubts about Chuck's innocence. Even Claire and Leo have doubts about the strength of their love and, for a brief while, give up hope as Leo moves out.

The message that Married To It attempts to put across to its audience is much stronger than its story line. The subjects of marriage, commitment, and friendship take grand precedence over the subplots of Chuck's stock trading scandal or Lucy's turbulent teenage anxieties. As it focuses on six individuals, the film also focuses on three relationships, proving that there is no one formula for marital success. According to Married To It, a healthy marriage is far from perfect, and it is the imperfections that make the partnership really work. At some point in each of the marriages, outside forces threaten the bond between husband and wife, and each relationship is salvaged in its own way. Married To It stresses the importance of friendship as well, as each character has someone other than their spouse on which to count. A happy marriage is neither as easy to maintain nor as easy to end as Hollywood would have one believe. Married To It shows three couples who legitimately fight for what is really important, and the result is a compelling look at how individuals come together and stay together, realistically.

Married To It is strongly aided in its attempts to characterize marriage realistically by its fine actors, including award-winning actors Beau Bridges (from 1989's The Fabulous Baker Boys) and Ron Silver (the star of Enemies, A Love Story in 1989 and Reversal Of Fortune in 1990). Bridges is one of Hollywood's hardest-working actors, as he commutes between film, stage, and television with ease and always delivers fine performances. Silver is also known for his stage work, as he won a Tony Award for his 1988 role in David Mamet's Speed The Plow, opposite Madonna and Joe Mantegna. Robert Sean Leonard, although a relative newcomer to Hollywood, is no less critically acclaimed: He nearly stole the show from Robin Williams in Peter Weir's Oscar-nominated film Dead Poets Society (1989) and played opposite Kenneth Branagh in his version of William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing (1993). Stockard Channing makes a welcome return to film after a successful stint on the stage. She is best known to American film audiences as Rizzo in the hit musical Grease (1978). Cybill Shepherd is also best known for playing a single role, that of Maddie Hayes in the celebrated television series Moonlighting, opposite Bruce Willis. Mary Stuart Masterson, perhaps the fastest-rising star of the group, found formidable success with her starring role in the sleeper hit Fried Green Tomatoes (1992). Also known for her roles in Some Kind Of Wonderful (1987), Immediate Family (1989), Chances Are (1989), and Benny And Joon (1993), Masterson is widely regarded as one of Hollywood's most promising young actresses.

The strength of its actors does lend a certain credibility to Married To It, although its message could easily stand on its own. Married To It is less about the institution of marriage than it is about what it takes for six individuals to come together in partnerships of love and friendship. To Americans, this subject matter is commonplace. To Hollywood films, it is rare, indeed--for which Married To It deserves recognition.

Review Sources:
American Film: Magazine of the Film and Television Arts. September/October, 1991, p. 52.
The Hollywood Reporter. September 13, 1991, p. 12.
Los Angeles Times. March 26, 1993, p. F8.
The New York Times. March 26, 1993, p. B9.
Variety. September 13, 1991, p. 3.

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