Fools Rush In MPAA Rating: PG-13 Entertainment: +3 Content: -1

This romantic comedy has all the ingredients of a Valentine's Day date movie, so it's appropriate that it's opening that day. Alex Whitman (Matthew Perry), an ambitious young executive with a large New York corporation, loves the big city. So he's very disappointed when he's sent to Las Vegas to supervise the construction of a new casino. Then he meets Isabel Fuentes (Salma Hayek) in a restaurant. A photographer at Caesar's Palace, Isabel is a gorgeous Mexican girl from a large Catholic family. Without knowing each other's last name, they spend the night together. Three months pass, and Isabel finds Alex to tell him she's pregnant and plans to keep the baby. He realizes he loves her, so they get married at a gaudy chapel on the strip, then get to know each other. Isabel's family is furious about their only daughter marrying outside the church, and he is afraid to tell his wealthy parents that he has married. Isabel wants to stay in Las Vegas but her husband will be transferred back to New York in four months. Their volatile relationship see-saws back and forth before balancing itself. Fools Rush In is a piece of fluff many will want to watch with their significant other. Some very beautiful desert scenes and a romantic musical score add some additional luster to the film's valentine theme.

Isabel having sex with a stranger seems totally out of character considering her strict upbringing and attachment to family. Alex wants to do the honorable thing by her, and accepts responsibility without questioning this total stranger's moral integrity. Although they are just shown sleeping in bed together on the night they meet, on the couple's wedding night they are shown kissing and caressing passionately with sex implied. Alex has a rather jaded attitude toward religion. He tells Isabel that it's an opiate for the masses, but she insists that God sends us signs to let us know what choices to make. Eventually he acknowledges that specific signs led him back to her. Six regular profanities and several obscenities foul the dialogue. Since they're showing decent, mostly wholesome characters doing the right thing, why do the writers insist on putting foul language in the script? Otherwise, we might have been able to recommend Fools Rush In.

Preview Reviewer: Mary Draughon
Distributor: Columbia Pictures, 10202 W. Washington Blvd., Culver City, CA 90232