Divorcees Juggle Kids and Career in One Fine Day

Journalist Jack Taylor (George Clooney) and architect Melanie Parker (Michelle Pfeiffer) are divorced New Yorkers trying to juggle high-powered careers and parenthood. Jack’s daughter Maggie (Mae Whitman) and Melanie’s son Sammy (Alex D. Linz) are kindergarten classmates. After a carpooling attempt gone bad causes them to miss their field trip, their parents have to spend all day trying to figure out what to do with them in the 1996 rom-com One Fine Day.

This is one of those movies that I’ve stumbled upon multiple times while channel surfing, and I finally decided to watch it from the beginning recently when it came up for Instant Viewing on Netflix. This PG-rated movie is part romance, part parent-child bonding film. Jack and Melanie have never met before this day, but they immediately clash as his lackadaisical tendencies set the day’s chaotic events into motion. Jack does not have primary custody, and although he loves his little girl, he finds it hard to be bothered with the minutiae of looking after her when his ex-wife drops her at his door unexpectedly. Control freak Melanie is the primary parent, but her focus on her career is so intense that Sammy sometimes gets left in the lurch. Both of them are extremely distracted, which causes problems for them as they try to pull off career-saving moves while keeping their kids busy.

Sammy and Maggie are both adorable and aggravating. While his primary problem is a propensity for putting objects in his nose, hers is wandering off quietly so that no one realizes until moments later that she has disappeared. Both are sweet-natured but oblivious to the trouble they are causing with their fidgety actions. Some of the mischief they get into is funny, while at other times it’s cringe-inducing. This is a big, dangerous city, after all, and both Jack and Melanie, who alternate supervising the kids, have a very difficult time keeping a close eye on them. Several scenarios would really be pretty alarming if they occurred in real life.

Of course, part of the development of the characters over the course of this single day is the adults realizing they need to be more attentive and, to a lesser extent, the kids realizing they need to stop running wild. The lesson doesn’t sink in so much with the children, but I would say there’s a least a hint that they will make more of an effort in the future. Then, of course, there’s Jack and Melanie, and while they mostly meet each other briefly before going their separate ways, they gradually get to know each other and begin to understand that their initial distaste for each other may have been misplaced.

In the midst of this jam-packed day, we see the four of them interact with a variety of people as Jack tries to find a key witness to back up something he printed in the paper and Melanie attempts to sell her latest design to a high-powered bidder. These brief interactions are fun, and I especially liked Charles Durning as Jack’s irascible boss and Ellen Greene as his key witness. However, this movie is mostly about the kids and their parents and how their being thrown together leads them to a better understanding of themselves and the possibility of more meetings to come. Epic romance this is not, but it is a cute movie showing that sometimes, a single day can tell two people quite a lot about each other.