Cousins (1989)

(On Cable TV, November 2022) I do believe in treating movies with matching intent—that is, watching them according to their intentions. But there are a few genres, plots and tropes that make it hard to keep a straight face as the filmmakers intended, and Cousins gets to work early at showing those overdone elements. Much of the narrative, for instance, is an elaborate rationalization for an affair—a man and woman (newly cousins-in-law) finding out that their spouses are having an affair with each other, and deciding to have one of their own. Since this is one of those “good” affairs, it starts slow and remains hesitant until it blossoms into True Love (aw) as opposed to their spouse’s affair, which is a despicable immature temporary thing. The epitome of self-conscious romantic drama that only works if you take a very selective protagonist-centred view of events, Cousins is the kind of movie that only works as a movie. Ted Danson and Isabella Rossellini both star as the good couple (what an ironic casting coup in featuring Rossellini in an affair drama, considering her pedigree), with Sean Young and William Petersen ending up as the bad one. (Plus, Lloyd Bridges as an elderly eccentric.) But it’s the director’s name that’s most surprising here: Joel Shumacher, during his initial ascending period as a mostly dramatic director. I strongly suspect that the film will strike most other viewers as a mostly innocuous romantic dramedy. But sometimes, the suspension of disbelief thing doesn’t work, and a movie looks like a hideous assembly of forced elements, and that’s how Cousins felt to me this time around.