I’d assume that we all tend to have the fantastical idea of being given the chance to start a new life, one filled with luxury and excess that our ordinary minds could never truly comprehend as being possible. In the case of Mrs. Winterbourne, Richard Benjamin’s strange but oddly compelling adaptation of the novel I Married a Dead Man by the legendary pulp fiction pioneer Cornell Woolrich (which had already been adapted in the form of No Man of Her Own, which is more appropriately toned as a film noir rather than a wacky romantic comedy), this is a reality for Connie, a young woman who finds herself being able to start afresh after being involved in a trainwreck that causes the death of another young woman and her husband, leading our young protagonist to be mistaken as the previously unseen wife, welcomed into the family that does not know that she is secretly the wrong person – but when given the chance to start a new life, she is willing to masquerade for the sake of avoiding returning to her impoverished existence. This is an oddity of a film – it never quite feels cohesive, nor particularly unique in either its approach to the material or the specific details that form its foundation, and it isn’t always the most worthy adaptation. Yet, there is something quite charming about the film if we look at it from a distance, which is perhaps the best place to view it, since it has an equal number of questionable moments, almost enough to match the more promising elements that would normally be seen as definitive in a film such as this, but unfortunately fall apart almost immediately. Not a particularly good film, but one that at least manages to be serviceable for the most part, which is relatively consistent with everything that makes this film so predictable.

For what it’s worth, Mrs. Winterbourne is a pleasant film in how it is constructed and executed, which is at least a quarter of what needed to be done in terms of bringing this story to the screen. Woolrich was a gifted writer, and his work (which was definitive of a particular era to which it was mostly bound) was fluid enough in its ideas to be relatively easy to adapt to other contexts, which is why so many of his books have been brought to the screen in various ways. The concept is quite good, especially if we are looking at this as a social statement, which is perhaps what it was intended to be before the decision was made to filter this story through the lens of a romantic comedy, rather than a pulp psychological thriller, as was originally intended in the book and in the prior adaptation, where the subject matter was at least partially more plausible than in this film. The film requires some degree of suspension of disbelief, especially because the central plot begins to erode as more simple subjects arise, which is perhaps the ideal scenario since absolutely nothing about how this film treats the main storyline is actually all that admirable. If anything, there is an unintentional darkness that subsumes that side of the film, almost as if the director didn’t know what to do with the material, having mainly made comedies in the past, so never truly being able to establish a firm grasp on the more dramatic subject matter. Benjamin is a competent director, but he was perhaps not the best fit for this material, primarily because it needed someone who wasn’t going to shoehorn misplaced humour at every turn and rather captured the more sentimental atmosphere without relying on excessive emotions, which is one of the several ways in which Mrs. Winterbourne falls apart when it should have been far more compelling.

This all leads us to try and understand precisely where the film failed. Several logical inconsistencies make this film quite unsettling in ways that were unintended. Primarily, we find that the major aspects of the story that are most interesting are dismissed, and in a way that makes very little sense. If there was ever a need to provide a sample of how deus ex machina is a deeply flawed style of storytelling, Mrs Winterbourne is a perfect example, since nearly everything that could not be given a neat conclusion simply disappeared from view – if it didn’t make sense, rather than reconfiguring the story to have some kind of resolution, these elements were simply just disregard, never to be seen again. Perhaps this helped prevent the film from becoming too dark (the primary catalyst of the film was a major trainwreck that kills multiple people), but it also didn’t allow for much meaningful conversation, which is unfortunate considering how much promise lingered beneath the surface of this film. The tonal shifts are also extremely jarring – I have rarely seen a film struggle so much to prove itself to be a comedy as much as this one, which throws in as many jokes into the story as it could, in the hopes that some of them would work in softening the emotional blows of the narrative, which is far too tragic for a comedy, especially one that tries to be as deep as this film. There isn’t a single moment in Mrs. Winterbourne where the humour feels like it is contributing to the experience, nor do we ever get the feeling that there is anything particularly interesting or engaging about this story. What we do get instead is a bitingly unfunny film that makes very little effort to contain much logic, falling victim to its misplaced eccentricity in ways that are honestly deeply unfortunate.

Mrs. Winterbourne is a film that has many problems, but it would be foolish to blame the actors for these problems since they are all mostly very good. Ricki Lake was still at the stage in her career where she was actively trying to be a serious actor, and while she does have a lot of talent and an abundance of charm, she’s not someone who does particularly well with more dramatic material, which is perhaps why her career didn’t take off in this particular side of the industry (although her work as a talk show host is terrific, and she found her niche) – and it isn’t incorrect to say that Mrs. Winterbourne needed a more consistent actor to play this role, rather than someone who struggled to convey the pathos required for the character. Lake does adequately well, but it’s not a performance that ever feels like it has much sincerity behind it, which is quite a concern considering she is the protagonist. Brendan Fraser takes on the dual roles of the love interest for Lake’s character, as well as his twin brother who perishes early in the film – and much like Lake, Fraser was cast more for his rising popularity than he was for his talent. Mercifully, he is still very good in the film, and manages to show that he has a lot of talent, much more than many may have given him credit for at the time. The entire film is held together by Shirley MacLaine, who is perhaps the only genuinely great performance, which is hardly surprising considering she elevates everything in which she appears. Taking a break from playing icy, aloof matriarchal characters, and instead embodying maternal warmth and sincerity, she is by far the most memorable aspect of the film, and deserves a much better film, since the effort she puts in warranted more than what she was given to do. The actors are not complicit in the problems that persist throughout this film, and they are the least likely culprits when it comes to finding the root of the problem – but it also doesn’t necessarily mean that they are all particularly good, which is one of the many reasons it is difficult to find a lot of praiseworthy aspects of this film.

There was a certain period in which Hollywood was churning out films that had good concepts but poor execution, comedies that took bold stances on certain issues but became derailed after failing to do anything interesting with its premise. Mrs. Winterbourne is one of the most obvious examples, and it is always difficult to pinpoint exactly where a film like this went wrong since it is mostly a pleasant film (which is the most generous assessment), and it is never truly awful, but rather misguided in ways that feel like they could have been avoided, either through actively engaging with the work more than just constructing it as a formulaic, by-the-numbers romantic comedy, or at least giving some depth to the material, which is quite unfortunately not serviced well by this film. Mrs. Winterbourne had potential (although not enough for us to lament what could have been possible), but it fell victim to a story that just never feels cohesive or interesting, and instead just exists as a bundle of missed opportunities, put together by a director without any interest in the material, and which exists seemingly to be a slight, mildly entertaining effort that lacks depth, humour and authenticity, three vitally important components that were needed to take this paltry concept and make it into something special.