Forces of Nature

A bumbling and typically charmless latter-day studio screwball comedy. Ben (Affleck) is flying to Savannah, Georgia, to marry Bridget (Tierney). He's evidently too stiff backed for happy marriage, because he won't admit he's apprehensive. Thus the screenplay throws a seagull in the plane's works and packs him off cross-country with a fellow passenger, kooky, emotionally battered Sarah (Bullock), to test his heart. To compensate for the lack of chemistry between the leads and in the script, director Hughes adds a spattering of vapid sunsets, loud hail and high storms to suggest some sort of elemental struggle. The various contemporary pop songs plastered over the soundtrack are equally pointlessly. Anyway, beyond the fumbled technique, Tierney is so patently the better bet that Ben's problem really looks like one of transport.