Jill Clayburgh

Despite the presence of hack director Arthur Hiller, this hybrid comedy-thriller works most of the time as pleasant faux Hitchcock. Gene Wilder is a book editor who is relaxing by taking a cross-country train ride. Then he gets caught up in a murder--and becomes a suspect. It's up to him to prove his own innocence. As noted, the script, by Colin Higgins, owes a big debt to Alfred Hitchcock; but the mystery isn't all that mysterious and the comedy isn't all that hilarious--at least not until Richard Pryor shows up, which is at least halfway through the film.

This comedy is based on Dan Jenkins's novel about two good-old-boy pro football players (Burt Reynolds and Kris Kristofferson). Best friends on the field and off, they're also friendly competitors in the arena of love for the same woman (Jill Clayburgh), who happens to be the daughter of their team's owner. Directed by Michael Ritchie, who was something of a poet of films about competition in the 1970s and early 1980s, this movie has a certain shaggy charm, abetted by Reynolds's knowing way with a one-liner.

Matthew Perry stars as Alex Whitman, a New Yorker sent to Las Vegas to oversee a construction project. There he meets Isabel Fuentes (Salma Hayek) and some serious chemistry brings them together for one night. But Alex doesn't see Isabel again until three months later, when he learns that she is pregnant. On a whim and a prayer, he proposes. However, there's more to marriage than a Vegas chapel and an Elvis impersonator, as Alex and Isabel soon learn.