Once Around movie review & film summary (1991)

The family, the Bellas, are complicated and close-knit, ruled by a father (Danny Aiello) who is smart, affectionate and wise about affairs of the heart, although not wise enough to deal with this new in-law. He and his wife (Gena Rowlands) have had a loving and successful marriage of 34 years, but their children seem to be having a harder time with love - especially Renata (Holly Hunter), who has been living with a guy who confesses he has no desire to marry her.

On the rebound, and with her own sister's marriage fresh in her mind, Hunter goes to the Caribbean to take a course on selling condominiums. The hero of the meeting is a supersalesman named Sam Sharpe (Richard Dreyfuss), who has allegedly sold countless condos for untold piles of money. She takes one look at him and decides, in her words, that one day they will be kissing on an altar in the sight of God. She moves the place-cards around to be sure of sitting next to him at lunch, and by the time lunch is over, they're holding hands.

But, hold on - it's not exactly that kind of story. This man Sam Sharpe is some piece of work. He has an unfailing touch for saying the wrong thing in the wrong way at the wrong time. All of his gestures are intended to be warm, kind and generous, but he has the kind of style that grates the wrong way - he puts your teeth on edge while you're trying to smile back at him. And he is capable of the most amazingly vulgar expressions and offensive gestures, as when he orders belly dancers for birthday parties or insists, absolutely insists, on singing an obscure Lithuanian song at a party where that would be sensationally inappropriate.

We keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. What's the real story on this guy? Is he for real? Has he really sold all those condos? Can he be trusted? "We don't know a thing about him," Hunter's sister complains to their parents. And they don't. But we think we do - we think "Once Around" is going to fall into familiar screenplay modes, and that Sam will be unmasked as some kind of impostor.

The movie toys with our expectations, those and others.

There is an ice-skating sequence in which we think we know exactly what's going to happen, twice, and the movie manipulates our expectations shamelessly. The most effective scenes are studies of social embarrassment, in which we cringe at the way Sam brings everything down to his own level of phony-sincere smarminess. The family can't stand him.

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