tek's rating: meh and three quarters

Her Alibi (PG-13)
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I'm pretty sure I must have seen this on TV sometime in the early 1990s, but I didn't remember anything about it. I rewatched it on DVD in 2021, and nothing about it was familiar, aside from the basic premise. Maybe not even that. Anyway, it's all pretty ridiculous.

Tom Selleck plays a mystery novelist named Philip Blackwood, who's having a dry spell with his work. So he goes to court looking for inspiration in the cases, which is where he sees a beautiful Romanian woman named Nina (Paulina Porizkova) who's accused of murder. He decides to give her an alibi, claiming they've been having an affair. His agent, Sam (William Daniels) backs him up on that, claiming Phil told him about it some time prior to the murder Nina is accused of. So, Nina is released from jail, but she doesn't want to go with Phil until she notices some KGB agents who are following her. She doesn't tell him about that, she just goes home with him. Throughout the movie, Phil narrates the new book he's working on, which is based on what's going on with Nina and himself, though what he writes bears almost no resemblance to reality. (And it's some pretty bad writing, which I suppose is part of the humor of the movie.) Also throughout the movie, Phil worries about whether Nina might actually be guilty of murder, and planning to murder him before he can rescind his alibi. At the same time that he's fearing for his life, Phil falls in love with Nina, for no apparent reason. And that's all I want to say about the movie.


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