The writer-director responsible for creating this curiously involving film, Joan Carr-Wiggin ( A Previous Engagement), has something interesting to say about alcoholism – that it can be terminated – but the point is lost. The drinking problem is played for laughs as a gimmick and it’s drilled so often you expect Red Skelton to wobble in with a hiccup. If I Were You covers too much ground, and some of it is covered too heavily, such as the lead character Madelyn’s (Harden) escalating dependence on alcohol to alleviate her pain after discovering that her husband (Joseph Kell) is having an affair. Harden’s is a marvelous performance in its range alone and, while it is not quite the breezy light comedy its tagline – “what happens when your new best friend is your husband’s mistress” – implies, the picture evokes at its best those life-affirming, secular humanist films of recent years such as Dan in Real Life and Hope Springs.
I recently had the pleasure of seeing an independent dark comedy starring Marcia Gay Harden ( The Hoax) called If I Were You.
