This page contains various reviews of the movie "Solitaire for 2", in which Mark Frankel played the role of Daniel Becker. Below you will find the reviews as they were written... (hopefully) ..... as with any review, some are positive and some are negative.... Either way, we hope that in providing this information, you might find that your interest is peaked and you will seek it and decide for yourself. If you have already seen it, perhaps you'll be interested to see which reviewers, if any, agree with your assessment.....

SOLITAIRE FOR TWO

Our rating: 1

Would you green-light this unpromising script pitch? An assertiveness-training professor with a minor in body language falls for a psychic paleontologist who responds to men's impure thoughts with compulsive violence. Sabotaging its minimal screwball potential with two exceedingly charmless leads, SOLITAIRE FOR TWO makes DUMB AND DUMBER and TOMMY BOY seem like triumphs of gossamer sophistication.

Philandering Non-Verbal Communications professor Daniel Becker (Mark Frankel) finds lasting love when he meets no-nonsense paleontologist Katie Burrill (Amanda Pays), who responds with a roundhouse punch. Dedicated to fossil research and hoping to finalize a dream project in India, spinster Katie is able to psychically read men's thoughts--or at least the lewd ones. During her first date with smitten Daniel, mindreader Katie KOs the waiter for nursing sexual desires about her. Daniel's unrelenting passion initially drives Katie deeper into prehistoric studies with her associate Sandip Tamar (Roshan Seth), whom she believes to be asexual. Sending out mixed signals to each other, the couple argue heatedly and often. On the eve of her departure for India, Katie causes friction between Daniel and his married friends with her unsolicited psychic pronouncements. But when she realizes that Tamar also also has sexual designs on her, Katie shelves her dream project and opts for married life with Daniel, who's sworn off playing the field forever.

SOLITAIRE FOR TWO is one of those creaky romantic fabrications full of pathetic running gags (Katie's pugilistic responses) and few payoffs (Daniel's mildest-mannered pupil takes his assertiveness training so well that he pulls a pistol on his nasty boss). These slight synthetic comic bits mesh perfectly with a story line so billowy it seems to have been written on thistles.

Not only does the film's direction have all the pull of an infomercial, but the tacky dialogue appears to have been penned by "Dating Game" staffers trying to recycle double entendres into a full-length screenplay. There's something especially disheartening about a smutty romantic comedy; it's as if one awakens after a one-night stand to find one's bedmate and one's wallet gone. Violated by this dysfunctional bedroom farce, the audience finds nothing humorous in this valentine to violence. (Extreme profanity, nudity, sexual situations, violence.)

DES MOINES REGISTER
October 20, 1995

There's fun in the cards
Joan Bunke

At The Movies

"Solitaire for 2" pits a romantic predator against a realistic psychic in a romantic comedy that's British-quirky to
the core. It's fun, clever, lightweight - a spritzy tonic to a movie season weighed down by too many thrillers that
disgust rather than entertain.

Writer-director Gary Sinyor plays with the theme of manipulation here, via his handsome, heartless hero, Daniel
Becker (Mark Frankel).

Daniel's played the field for years - lots of sex, lots of fun, no commitments. He has one of those make-work jobs
that corporations offer in lieu of work that contributes to society: He's a lecturer on body-language to
middle-class business types in brown suits who want to read the competition's mind.

A control freak, Daniel plays his manipulative games with anything female, including the blond, buxom
motorcycle cop who keeps pulling him over in his souped-up sports car.

For sport, he zeroes in on Katie Burill, a paleontologist who also has ESP, or something like extrasensory
perception. She reads Daniel's tricky mind - and she doesn't like the sex-driven plotting she gets from her
"readings."

"There's more to life than lust," she snarls. As for Daniel, he's interested in conquest, nothing more. "Once we've
done it," he says, "I can forget about it."

Katie keeps fobbing him off. Matter of fact, she's very physical: She punches him every chance she gets. Daniel
comes back for more, playing it cool but drawn by her brush-off. Round and round they go - bouncing their
gripes with each other off Daniel's happily married friends.

Katie even reads Daniel's dreams - and she's really ticked when she discovers he's having an erotic dream
about Caroline (Maryam D'Abo), wife of his best friend, Harry (Jason Isaacs).

The Katie-Daniel dates - whether in restaurants or at the National History Museum (and listening to a band
called Right Said Fred) - turn into disasters. They're further complicated by Katie's research partner, Dr. Sandip
(Roshan Seth), who plays a crafty professional game that turns personal in a way that sets Katie to punching
again.

Round and round the two mini-monster egos go, falling in love along the way, of course, and popping off crisp
dialogue. Director Sinyor favors jump- cutting and letting us fill in the blanks. It's a refreshing change from the
A-B-C stuff we usually get in American films.

A fringe benefit of the story is that Sinyor shot some of the night scenes in the greenery-draped Colonnade on
Hampstead Heath. It's a mysterious and enchanting night location worth the whole film - which is a delight for its
actors, its sense of great fun and a couple of tunes, "Love Is the Drug" and " All the Love We Need."

7 "Solitaire for 2" - Written and directed by Gary Sinyor, produced by Sinyor and Richard Holmes; with Amanda
Pays, Mark Frankel, Maryam D'Abo, Jason Isaacs, Roshan Seth, Liza Walker. Cavalier features. Rated * * *,
as Joan Bunke sees it, on a rising scale from no stars (hopeless) to five stars (excellent).