Verdict
Summary
A movie that has grown on me over the years, Sydney Pollack’s remake of Billy Wilder’s 1954 original (which was based on a play), the ’90s version of Sabrina works even better now than it did when it originally came out (I saw it theatrically on Christmas day), at least for me, because it reminds me that Hollywood used to make very sweet and lovely romantic comedies without a trace of irony or jadedness. This one has aged well and more than 30 years later it should be considered an underrated gem.
Plot:
Two very wealthy brothers fall for the same woman.
Review:
Having grown up in the servant’s quarters of the sprawling estate of a pair of very wealthy brothers – the older, business-minded Linus (Harrison Ford) and the younger, better looking but good for nothing bachelor David (Greg Kinnear) – Sabrina (Julia Ormand) has been in love with David since she was a child, only loving his looks, but not his heart. Her father (John Wood) is the wise chauffer of the family, and he sees and knows everything he needs to know about his daughter and these men, and so he sends her away to France for a few years to “find herself” while working with a fashion photographer. She does indeed discover herself, and when she returns home after being gone so long, she is completely made over with confidence and a whole new look, turning her into an incredibly beautiful and graceful young woman, plum for the picking. The moment David – who’s now engaged to be married in a “merger” with the daughter (Lauren Holly) of a tech billionaire (Richard Crenna) – lays eyes on the brand new beauty Sabrina, he falls head over heels in love with her, which is fortuitous for Sabrina but very inconvenient for Linus, who has been working on setting up this billion dollar deal for years. If David breaks off his engagement, the deal is off, and so Linus comes up with a rather easy plan to have Sabrina fall in love with him instead. The plan works, but by meddling with Sabrina’s dear heart, he realizes how wrong he was to do such a thing … because he never intended to fall in love with her himself.
A movie that has grown on me over the years, Sydney Pollack’s remake of Billy Wilder’s 1954 original (which was based on a play), the ’90s version of Sabrina works even better now than it did when it originally came out (I saw it theatrically on Christmas day), at least for me, because it reminds me that Hollywood used to make very sweet and lovely romantic comedies without a trace of irony or jadedness. The performances are uniformly good, with a truly ladylike Ormand at the center of it. Ford, who gets first billing, is more of a supporting character in the movie he headlines, and it’s the type of role he was not used to playing, and in fact this might be one of his least physically demanding roles he ever played. John Williams did the understated score, while the script retains the staginess of the play (lots of characters enter and exit through doors, while other characters remain stationary and wait for other characters to enter, for example). This one has aged well and more than 30 years later it should be considered an underrated gem.
Kino Lorber’s new Blu-ray of Sabrina arrives just in time for Valentine’s Day, and it comes in a new HD master from a 4K scan of the 35mm original camera negative, looking and sounding better than it ever has before. It comes with an audio commentary by several film historians, plus the trailer and a slipcover.
