One Fine Day (1996)

Variety
"ONE FINE DAY is a pretty ideal baby-boomer romantic comedy. Made with the right breezy insouciance and performed with consummate flair and sexy star allure by Michelle Pfeiffer and George Clooney..." 12/02/1996

ReelViews 7 of 10
One Fine Day has all the ingredients of an enjoyable romantic comedy: a decent premise, likable leads, and a solid supporting cast. The problem is, instead of throwing the two main characters together and giving them an opportunity to get to know one another, the script insists on keeping them apart as they run around New York City, trying to sort out one crisis after another. By the time they finally get a chance to snuggle together on a couch, too much time has passed for us to be enthralled by the long-delayed magic that materializes...Michelle Pfeiffer and George Clooney make an appealing couple. They're both charismatic, and, when they're together, they generate sufficient electricity for us to want them to stay that way. Unfortunately, One Fine Day keeps them separated for much of its running time. Both Melanie and Jack are in the midst of work-related emergencies, and the film is determined to pursue their careers with as much vigor as it pursues their personal lives. Frankly, however, Jack's attempts to verify the veracity of a newspaper column he wrote and Melanie's juggling of meetings don't make for compelling viewing...One Fine Day has a few enchanting moments, such as a scene where Jack sweeps Melanie off her feet (literally), then splashes around in a large puddle of water. However, as a romantic comedy, this is a spotty affair because it's not really funny or romantic enough. Keeping the leads apart might work for something like Sleepless in Seattle, where the intention is to develop an old-fashioned, long-distance romance, but, in a movie like this -- one that's being pulled in so many directions that it's coming apart at the seams -- it's a mistake. For much of its running length, One Fine Day lacks focus and direction, and that makes it one fine mess. - James Berardinelli
 
Chicago Sun-Times 6 of 10
``Cinema is the history of boys photographing girls.'' Or so Jean-Luc Godard is claimed to have said. I thought of his words while watching ``One Fine Day,'' an uninspired formula movie with another fine performance by Michelle Pfeiffer. She does everything in this movie that a much better movie would have required from her, but the screenplay lets her down...Since Pfeiffer is one of the producers, she can blame herself; she *wanted* to make this predictable fluff about two beautiful people who engage in a verbal sparring match for 90 minutes while we patiently wait for them to acknowledge that they have fallen hopelessly in love. She completes a three-dimensional, appealing character and puts her in a lockstep plot...The movie stars Pfeiffer as Melanie, a divorced mom who has some kind of a job involving big architectural projects. George Clooney plays Jack, a divorced columnist for the New York Daily News. Through a series of coincidences, both single parents are suddenly required to take care of their kids for the day, and then circumstances throw them together, again and again...So OK, what's going to happen? Consider this to be like the crossword puzzle. Get out your pencils...Meanwhile, the two kids like each other, and the two parents like each other, and there are scenes at the docks, scenes in the park, scenes in toy stores, scenes in the streets, scenes in the rain, scenes in taxis, scenes where Ocean Spray cranberry juice gets squirted on Pfeiffer's blouse and similar scenes in which other garments are stained on a regular basis...Pfeiffer looks, acts and sounds wonderful throughout all of this, and George Clooney is perfectly serviceable as a romantic lead, sort of a Mel Gibson lite. I liked them. I wanted them to get together. I wanted them to live happily ever after. The sooner the better. - Roger Ebert