City of Angles (1998)

Brad Silberling helms this American adaptation of Wim Wenders 1987 German film Wings of Desire, which is about an angel who falls in love with a mortal woman and choses to become human to be with her. The two halves of this couple work good separately, Meg Ryan is charming as always as an L.A. doctor and Nicholas Cage as the angel does a good job of playing someone who isn't human, however together they have no chemistry, I just did not get the attraction between them. I thought the story was corny and slow, it had a few interesting ideas concerning angels but not enough, or at least not explored sufficiently to be enough. I really liked Dennis Franz as the previously "fallen angel" who tries to help Cage make his decision and then learn about being human, he was the best part of the movie but still not enough. Andre Braugher is more or less wasted here. It probably hurt some that I basically knew the whole story before going into the movie, though this is the kind of movie where story is always going to be secondary, it's supposed to be about the romance, and because there is no chemistry the romance doesn't work. This movie was really broke in the casting phase and its fun to try to think who else they could have put in this back in the late 90's, it could have been better (John Travolta) or it could have been worse (Mel Gibson). Well thought of by a certain generation of particularly women movie goers, but I do not think it stands the test. Kind of a bore. *1/2