We all know that love should be more than just physical attration, and yet few movies go beyond surface appearance and sugar-coated banter. Prelude to a Kiss is the wonderful exception. It takes us beyond the usual preditable plot and gives us a rare insight into what is really important in love.
An enchanting and well-wrought script supported by excellent performances, this movie speaks to any who listen with their head and heart.
Humor, magic, and mystery are interwoven as a husband searches for his wife who is missing but still there. I don't want to give the plot away. Watching the story unfold is part of the movie's charm. I will say that you will be surprised and, I hope, moved by the story and message this fine piece of filmaking brings to us. One of my all time favorites. Don't miss it.

First off I must say that I'm a big Alec Baldwin and Meg Ryan fan. So when I discovered "Prelude to a Kiss" by accident at the rental store, I knew I had to check it out! Two of some of my favorite actors/actresses in one movie, in a romance movie no less! Well... all I can say is that I'm glad I only rented this movie instead of buying it.

Peter Hoskins (Alec Baldwin) cannot pinpoint his attraction to Rita Boyle (Meg Ryan). She has a pessimistic view on life and she has many strange quirks, including never being able to sleep. And yet the two inevitably fall in love and it seems that Peter has found the perfect happiness when Rita agrees to marry him. Yet on their wedding day, a mysterious Old Man (Sydney Walker) comes to the wedding reception and wishing to kiss the bride, Rita allows him to. An innocent kiss, but it wasn't in the slightest. On their honeymoon, Peter cannot get rid of the feeling that Rita is NOT the Rita he knew. Outwardly she is the same, but Peter knows she really isn't. What has happened?

"Prelude to a Kiss" is for one thing, NOT a romantic/comedy. It is a romance/drama/fantasy since it deals with many supernatural elements. Oh, and another thing, the story isn't really about the 'prelude' of 'a' kiss, it is the prelude AND aftermath of 'the' kiss.

My biggest problem with the story is that it really doesn't seem to flow very well. The pace is slow, from the very beginning where you feel that it might pick up. Unfortunately though, the end is rather luke-warm and just doesn't have the power I expected it to have. Another problem is the sexual content. In my opinion, true love can be better expressed by the main characters NOT having sex. Come on, the best classic romance stories are those where the guy and the girl DON'T have to have sex to show their love and attraction for each other.

It's true that the theme of love is pretty well handled. Before the wedding, the viewers cannot really see if they two main characters are really 'in love' per say. There is an attraction between the two, yet you're not sure if it's love. But after the wedding and the 'occurrence' happens, watchers can see that the two were meant for each other, for their love had passed a crucial test.

The acting is pretty well done, mostly by Alec Baldwin. There is one VERY emotional scene where his character faces the 'fake' Rita and cries straight from his heart for the other to tell him where Rita is. It was an extremely well done and powerful scene, you couldn't help but cry out together with Peter. That has got to be one of the best acting scenes done by Alec Baldwin in my opinion. Meg Ryan is also good as a slightly neurotic and flighty woman who finds love in steady and straigh-forward Peter. She still walks funny though...

Anyway, "Prelude to a Kiss" is a very mediocre film. Should be watched for die-hard Baldwin and Ryan fans. But if not, the movie can be easily passed over for some better romance classics. Some Baldiwn or Ryan movie recommendations are

Well, this one is a charmer. Silly plot on the surface, but touches on some deep issues regarding love, and the nature of it. Alec Baldwin is superb as the lovesick, then profoundly heartbroken newlywed. The moment when he realizes, truly, that Rita....isn't Rita, and says "I'm on to you"....will make you cry. I'm an Alec Baldwin fan, I admit, but he is so breathtakingly, stunningly, mindbogglingly beautiful to look at in this film he's almost hard to watch....it's almost painful. Cripes, does he have the most beautiful face on the planet, or what...and that astonishingly thick, cowlicky head of hair....and....and...um..I digress. See it ladies, it will make you ache in the most pleasant way...its a keeper.

I tried to watch this, I really did. I mean, Meg is adorable and Alec has nice hair on his chest. But I just couldn't get interested. I mean, Meg is cute and kinky (kinky in a nice way of course) and she sincerely worries about bringing children into this troubled world, and Alec's character has had a troubled youth. So their characters have depth, I'm sure. And he meets her parents and gets warm with her mom and watches dear old dad's embarrassing antics with his dog tattoos, and they drink beer out of the bottle and you know it's going to be true love and all that.

But somehow I didn't feel any chemistry between them. I mean how would Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn play this? (Would they play it?) How about Tony Randall and Jack Klugman? What the hey, how about Abbott and Costello? And then I saw the old guy who was going to kiss her (I knew the premise) and I didn't want to see THAT. He (Sydney Walker) gets on a train at random and goes to a random destination and is fated to arrive at their wedding at exactly the right time, etc.

Anyway, after a while I figured it was probably just me. After all, this is Meg Ryan who is adorable and can still play ingenue types at forty-something (she was only 31 when this was released), not to mention that this is adapted from a hit Broadway show of the same name from playwright Craig Lucas. And I guess I should add that Kathy Bates, who is a fine, fine, underrated actress (how I loved her in the film version of Stephen King's Misery 1990; boy wasn't she a nasty), is going to have a part. (Turned out to be a small part.) But still, let's face it, I'm just not the right guy to fully appreciate such a film.

But then, recalling that I am an intrepid reviewer and realizing I have an obligation to my public who need to see cutesy movies trashed--that, and noticing that today's rerun of Seinfeld is one I've seen three times--I flicked the VCR back on and tried to watch with my eyes closed. That didn't work, so I tried it with the sound off. I thought it might be interesting to try and guess what they were doing by just watching. (You can observe a whole lot by just watching, I've been told. In fact, Yogi told me that.) Then I decided I better turn the sound back on because I knew that this kiss by an old man is going to turn the bride into somebody with the mind of the old man or something like that, and I had better catch what's going on.

Okay I'm still hanging in there and this is actually getting good. No, I mean it. Meg is now an old man (in her soul) and they're in Jamaica and she's dressing old man weird and loving life and Alec is wondering what happened to the woman he married.

I won't say any more except that Meg handles her new persona rather well, and Alec is very professional. Still I have to warn you that it gets syrupy at the end and there's a deep layer of what it means to be in love with someone over and above their sexuality--and that's good. However what really bothered me about this movie was that Meg Ryan was too skinny. She needs to quit stressing and relax a little, have some chocolate mousse and realize it's okay to be thirty-something then and forty-something now.

Baldwin and Ryan are at their most appealing in this heartfelt romantic gem. It's a profound, surprising story about embracing life, and it's one of the best-written movies in the genre I've ever seen. It was especially great that when the movie was in theaters, no critic gave away the plot device that turns the movie on its head at the end of the first act, so it was a beautiful surprise when it happened.