Year Of The Comet

Penelope Ann Miller plays a London wine merchant’s daughter who has to catalog a wine collection in a Scottish cellar, and discovers there an exceptionally rare wine bottled in 1811, the year of the comet. Accompanied on her trip back to London by a client’s uncouth employee (Timothy Daly), she finds herself the target of many prospective thieves (including Louis Jourdan). Peter Yates directed this romantic caper comedy from a script by William Goldman that harks back (in aspiration, at least) to cross-country Hitchcockian romps of the 50s and 60s, but the movie is so in love with its own would-be cuteness that it strangles on the effort. At least the Scottish and Riviera settings, if not the actors, are used attractively. (JR)

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