text: Director/screenwriter Allan Burns seems to have patched two different scripts together before coming up with this minor outing: a comedy about infidelity and a melodrama about loss and sabotage. It results in a wincingly unfunny film. Christine Lahti plays a crass, cynical TV news reporter who makes friends with aerobics instructor Mary Tyler Moore and is soon having dinner with Moore and her family--only to discover Mary's husband (Ted Danson) is Lahti's secret affair! Burns has a strange, stop-and-start rhythm to his dialogue which is neither realistic nor effective (just increasingly annoying, because nothing important ever seems to get said). Rail-thin Moore, looking alarmingly frail in her leotard, has a radiant smile but doesn't convince as Danson's wife, and Danson gets stuck with a paltry, thankless role (he's just there to be a cad). The movie attempts to cover all the bases in a classic case of overreaching (woman's role in the workplace, the TV news-biz, the cheating family man, the working wife and mother who wants more, a woman's need for female friendships, et al), but nothing substantial comes out of these ideas since Burns only half-heartedly examines the issues. As a writer, he is surprisingly free of punchlines, but is devoid of a purpose as well, and the heavy plotting just gets all fouled up. *1/2 from ****