A Pyromaniac's Love Story is a 1995

1995 in film

-Top grossing films:-Events:* March 22 - The Dogme 95 movement is officially announced in Paris by Danish directors Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg.* March 28 - Actress Julia Roberts and singer Lyle Lovett announce their plans for separation....

 American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 romantic comedy film

Romantic comedy film

Romantic comedy films are films with light-hearted, humorous plotlines, centered on romantic ideals such as that true love is able to surmount most obstacles. One dictionary definition is "a funny movie, play, or television program about a love story that ends happily"...

 directed by Joshua Brand

Joshua Brand

Joshua Brand is an American television writer, director, and producer who created St. Elsewhere, I'll Fly Away and Northern Exposure with his writing-and-producing partner John Falsey....

. The original screenplay

Screenplay

A screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...

 is by Morgan Ward. The movie was filmed in Toronto (Canada).

Plot synopsis

Sergio is a Toronto

Toronto

Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...

 pastry shop assistant who is smitten with Hattie, a mousy girl who works in her father Perry's diner and refuses to consider a relationship with him until he begins to earn a decent living. An opportunity presents itself when Linzer, Sergio's employer, offers him $20,000 to torch the store so he can collect the insurance money and use it to give his wife the lifestyle he feels she deserves. Sergio declines the offer, but one night the bakery is burnt to the ground anyway.

Sergio is offered $25,000 to take the blame by the millionaire

Millionaire

A millionaire is an individual whose net worth or wealth is equal to or exceeds one million units of currency. It can also be a person who owns one million units of currency in a bank account or savings account...

 father of the real culprit, the mentally unstable Garet, who set the bakery on fire as a public declaration of his love for his society girlfriend Stephanie, whose attraction to Sergio, unbeknownst to her vengeance-seeking beau, is unrequited. Despite his innocence, Sergio claims responsibility for the fire so he can use the money to claim Hattie as his own. Linzer, however, has second thoughts about allowing Sergio to pay for the crime, so he confesses he did it, while his wife insists she set the blaze to prevent her husband from being imprisoned. Sgt. Zikowski is left to determine who of the four claiming guilt is the real perpetrator.

Principal cast

• John Leguizamo
  John Leguizamo
  Jonathan Alberto "John" Leguizamo is an Colombian-American actor, producer, voice artist, and comedian.-Early life:...
  
   as Sergio
• William Baldwin
  William Baldwin
  William Joseph "Billy" Baldwin is an American actor, producer, and writer, known for his starring roles in such films as Flatliners , Backdraft , Sliver , Fair Game , Virus , Double Bang , as Johnny 13 in Danny Phantom , Art Heist , The Squid and the Whale , as himself...
  
   as Garet
• Sadie Frost
  Sadie Frost
  Sadie Frost is an English actress, who currently runs fashion label Frost French and has designed the kitchens for a new development in the East End of London.-Biography:Frost was born Sadie Liza Vaughan in London...
  
   as Hattie
• Erika Eleniak
  Erika Eleniak
  Erika Eleniak is an American Playboy Playmate and actress, perhaps best known for her role in Baywatch as Shauni McClain. She also starred in the films Under Siege and The Beverly Hillbillies.-Early life:...
  
   as Stephanie
• Armin Mueller-Stahl
  Armin Mueller-Stahl
  Armin Mueller-Stahl is a German film actor, painter, writer and musician.-Early life:Mueller-Stahl was born in Tilsit, East Prussia...
  
   as Linzer
• Joan Plowright
  Joan Plowright
  Joan Ann Plowright, Baroness Olivier, DBE , better known as Dame Joan Plowright, is an English actress, whose career has spanned over sixty years. Throughout her career she has won two Golden Globe Awards and a Tony Award and has been nominated for an Academy Award, an Emmy, and two BAFTA Awards...
  
   as Mrs. Linzer
• Mike Starr
  Mike Starr (actor)
  Michael "Mike" Starr is an American actor. Starr is notable for his large size, standing 6 ft 3 1/2 in , and has typically been typecast as thugs or henchmen....
  
   as Sgt. Zikowski
• Michael Lerner
  Michael Lerner (actor)
  -Life and career:Lerner was born in Brooklyn, New York of Romanian Jewish descent, the son of Blanche and George Lerner, who was a fisherman and antiques dealer. He was raised in Bensonhurst and Red Hook. His brother, Ken Lerner, is also an actor...
  
   as Perry

Principal production credits

• Producer
  Film producer
  A film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...
  
   ..... Mark Gordon
  Mark Gordon
  Mark Gordon is an American television and film producer.- Background :Gordon was born in Newport News, Virginia on October 10, 1956...
  
  
• Original Music
  Film score
  A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film, forming part of the film's soundtrack, which also usually includes dialogue and sound effects...
  
   ..... Rachel Portman
  Rachel Portman
  Rachel Mary Berkeley Portman, OBE is a British composer, best known for her film work. She was the first female composer to win an Academy Award in the category of Best Original Score...
  
  
• Cinematography
  Cinematography
  Cinematography is the making of lighting and camera choices when recording photographic images for cinema. It is closely related to the art of still photography...
  
   ..... John Schwartzman
  John Schwartzman
  John Schwartzman A.S.C. is an American cinematographer for numerous films.He is the son of Jack Schwartzman and stepson of Talia Shire. He is best known for his collaborations with director Michael Bay...
  
  
• Production Design
  Production designer
  In film and television, a production designer is the person responsible for the overall look of a filmed event such as films, TV programs, music videos or adverts. Production designers have one of the key creative roles in the creation of motion pictures and television. Working directly with the...
  
   ..... Dan Davis
• Art Direction
  Art director
  The art director is a person who supervise the creative process of a design.The term 'art director' is a blanket title for a variety of similar job functions in advertising, publishing, film and television, the Internet, and video games....
  
   ..... Peter Grundy
• Set Decoration
  Set decorator
  A set decorator is in charge of the set dressing on a film set, which includes the furnishings, wallpaper, lighting fixtures, and many of the other objects that will be seen in the film. Props and set dressing often overlap, but are provided by different departments...
  
   ..... Jaro Dick
• Costume Design
  Costume design
  Costume design is the fabrication of apparel for the overall appearance of a character or performer. This usually involves researching, designing and building the actual items from conception. Costumes may be for a theater or cinema performance but may not be limited to such...
  
   ..... Bridget Kelly

Critical reception

In his review in the New York Times, Stephen Holden called the film "as cuddlesome as a tombstone in January" and added, "[It] wants to be a zany urban romance on the order of Moonstruck

Moonstruck

Moonstruck is a 1987 American romantic comedy film directed by Norman Jewison. It stars Cher, Nicolas Cage, Danny Aiello, Vincent Gardenia, and Olympia Dukakis....

, with a bit of A Midsummer Night's Dream

A Midsummer Night's Dream

A Midsummer Night's Dream is a play that was written by William Shakespeare. It is believed to have been written between 1590 and 1596. It portrays the events surrounding the marriage of the Duke of Athens, Theseus, and the Queen of the Amazons, Hippolyta...

thrown in. But its nearly jokeless screenplay by Morgan Ward is so convoluted with plot twists that the characters barely have time to breathe before the story forces them to adopt a new set of caricatured attitudes."

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert

Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...

 of the Chicago Sun-Times

Chicago Sun-Times

The Chicago Sun-Times is an American daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois. It is the flagship paper of the Sun-Times Media Group.-History:The Chicago Sun-Times is the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the city...

said the film "starts out like a lighthearted charmer, and then it goes on and on and on—circling the same plot idea so doggedly that I began to wonder idly what it might have been like as a short subject. It doesn't have a mean bone in its body or, for that matter, a brain in its head . . . The characters behave like simpletons, breaking up and getting back together again at the convenience of the plot. Director Joshua Brand . . . has the nerve to go for the sort of cheerful whimsy of Moonstruck, Sleepless in Seattle

Sleepless in Seattle

The film was originally to have been scored by John Barry, but when he was given a list of 20 songs he had to put in the film, he quit.#As Time Goes By - Jimmy Durante #A Kiss to Build a Dream on - Louis Armstrong #Stardust - Nat King Cole...

and While You Were Sleeping

While You Were Sleeping

While You Were Sleeping is a 1995 romantic comedy film directed by Jon Turteltaub and written by Daniel G. Sullivan and Frederic Lebow. It stars Sandra Bullock as Lucy, a Chicago Transit Authority token collector and Bill Pullman as Jack, the brother of a man whose life she saves, along with Peter...

. But whimsy without wit is like an empty smile."

In the San Francisco Chronicle

San Francisco Chronicle

thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...

, Mick LaSalle

Mick LaSalle

Mick LaSalle is an American Mick LaSalle is an [[United States|American]] Mick LaSalle is an [[United States|American]] [[film reviewer] and the author of two books on pre-[[Motion Picture Production Code|Hays Code]] Hollywood...

 said it "has a fine cast and a director, Joshua Brand, who has a feeling for the tone of the piece. The film's cinematography is crisp and slightly fantastic, and its sound track is sardonic but warm. But the script—ooh, that script. After a charming first few minutes, A Pyromaniac's Love Story becomes relentlessly fey, unbearably picaresque and sadistically lyric. Morgan Ward's screenplay is like an inept attempt at a Giraudoux play or a John Patrick Shanley

John Patrick Shanley

John Patrick Shanley is an American playwright, screenwriter, and director. He also contributed articles on the performing arts to The New York Times among other publications.-Life and career:...

 script. But without the passion behind it—or the flair for heightened language—the thing is a 100-minute nose-dive."

Joe Leydon of Variety

Variety (magazine)

Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...

called the film "a quirky little gem" and "a modern-day fairy tale with a bemused appreciation of romantic love, blazing passions and other human follies."

In the San Francisco Examiner, Gary Kamiya observed, "It would take more than a can of lighter fluid to ignite this soggy film. A Pyromaniac's Love Story aspires to being an offbeat comedy, somewhere between a fairy tale and a whimsical love story. What it is an irritatingly smarmy, implausible mess. A kind of slow-motion farce

Farce

In theatre, a farce is a comedy which aims at entertaining the audience by means of unlikely, extravagant, and improbable situations, disguise and mistaken identity, verbal humour of varying degrees of sophistication, which may include word play, and a fast-paced plot whose speed usually increases,...

 that ill-advisedly attempts to mingle wildly disparate realities and acting styles, [it] might have worked had its various plot strands been ingeniously interwoven. But no P.G. Wodehouse or Georges Feydeau

Georges Feydeau

Georges Feydeau was a French playwright of the era known as the Belle Époque. He is remembered for his many lively farces.-Biography:Georges Feydeau was born in Paris, the son of novelist Ernest-Aimé Feydeau and Léocadie Bogaslawa Zalewska. At the age of twenty, Feydeau wrote his first comic...

is anywhere in sight . . . This film slips between arch cutesiness and semi-seriousness with no discernible pattern or purpose."

External links

• A Pyromaniac's Love Story at the Internet Movie Database