
DATE: Wednesday, June 4, 1997               TAG: 9706040068

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E5   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Movie Review 

SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, MOVIE CRITIC 

                                            LENGTH:   63 lines

`` 'TIL THERE WAS YOU'' KEEPS LOVE AT BAY TOO LONG

THE STUDIO'S synopsis for `` 'Til There Was You'' proclaims that it took 20 years for them to experience love at first sight. For the audience, it may well seem like longer.

`` 'Til There Was You'' has some very bright, witty, even sharp, moments, but for the most part, it is inflicted with too much plot and not enough emotion. It is a spin on the ``love at first sight'' myth, playing more on the fate that leads up to the moment rather than reveling in the glowing aftereffects.

Gwen (Jeanne Tripplehorn) and Nick (Dylan McDermott) ran into each other back in elementary school. Since then, she's always had a crush on him - particularly because all her real-life men turn out to be jerks. She has a fleeting affair with a college prof (played by Ken Olin of ``thirtysomething'') that leads to heartbreak.

Arriving at adulthood, she is a ghost writer for celebrity biographies and he is an architect for a trendy Los Angeles firm.

Directed by first-timer Scott Winant and written by Winnie Holzman, both alumni of TV's much-missed ``thirtysomething,'' the film has funny things to say about trendy restaurants and pretentious jet-setters, but its targets and its comments are smallish while it spends more time with a convoluted plot that brings the two leads closer and closer together - slowly. The audience gets the idea that there will be a happy ending, but when? There's something off-putting about a film that makes a great deal out of announcing its ending and then trying delaying tactics.

Both Tripplehorn and McDermott are actors who have been on the brink for quite some time but have been plagued by unfortunate films. She by ``Waterworld'' and he by the remake of ``Miracle on 34th Street,'' both projects that were, at one time, expected to make stars of them. She is miscast here as a klutzy, unattractive, vulnerable type. He, on the other hand, is required to be little more than decorative, the resident male lead. Neither will be helped in their quest for stardom.

The film is stolen by Sarah Jessica Parker as a tough-as-nails ex-child TV star who has survived drugs, Hollywood and all the rest. She was in a ``Brady Bunch''-like show back when all America loved her. Now, most people think she must be dead. She easily picks up McDermott.

In a summer afflicted by a lack of movie romance and an overabundance of explosives, we would like to have liked `` 'Til There Was You,'' but maybe fate shouldn't be trusted quite this much. ILLUSTRATION: Photo

PARAMOUNT PICTURES

Sarah Jessica Parker and Dylan McDermott in `` 'Til There Was You.''

Graphic

MOVIE REVIEW

`` 'Til There Was You''

Cast: Jeanne Tripplehorn, Dylan McDermott, Sarah Jessica Parker,

Jennifer Aniston, Karen Allen, Michael Tucker, Nina Foch, Ken Olin

Director: Scott Winant

Screenplay: Winnie Holzman

Music: Miles Goodman and Terence Blachard

MPAA rating: PG-13 (some language, but comparatively mild;

discreet sexual situations)