My One and Only

Zellweger seeks man to care for her in 50s comedy

CHRIS NOTH and Renee Zellweger in “My One and Only.”

It’s quirky. It’s fun. It has interesting characters.
“My One and Only” is definitely worth 108 minutes of your time.
Wonderfully nostalgic, the film stars Renee Zellweger as an aging socialite in 1953, married to a womanizing band leader, played by Kevin Bacon.
Zellweger’s character is Anne Deveraux, a ditzy blond who spends her time traveling and relaxing. She returns home early to find her husband, Dan, in their bedroom with another woman.
She’s not surprised. She takes it in stride. She even helps the woman get her clothes on, remarking she looks like a tramp. “What am I saying,” she then says. “You are a tramp.”
She leaves hubby with sons George and Robbie in tow, played respectively by Logan Lerman and Mark Rendall.
They empty out hubby’s account, jewels and all, buy an expensive $3,000 vehicle and head out to Pittsburgh where the Zellweger character has an old friend. Everywhere she goes, she has an old friend.
The thought of actually working for a living is totally foreign to always smiling Anne. She lives in an age where beautiful women find a man to care for them.
A reoccurring theme in the movie is Anne and sons meet people who steal from them. She meets an old friend in Pittsburgh she thinks can help her financially. When he begs her for money over dinner, she excuses herself to go to the powder room. When she returns, the money in her purse is gone and the restaurant manager is only interested in getting the dinner tab paid.
Enter Chris North, playing a man in uniform who comes to her aid. They court and eventually become engaged. The North character gives young George a lecture on how there can only be one top dog in a family and he, not George, has that roll.
George replies with a bark but is able to plant a wedge that eventually breaks off the engagement.
George appears the most stable. Mom has no head for money or a sense of responsibility. When she decides to take her kids out of school to start their cross-country trek, she doesn’t even know where they go. Brother Robbie is very gay and vapid.
Anne keeps smiling through it all. When she tries to spark a relationship with a man in a bar, he turns out to be a house detective who charges the Zellweger character with prostitution.
When she tries to spark a relationship with an old flame, she discovers he has a new, younger girlfriend who remarks her mother has a dress like Zellweger’s. She asks if Anne can dance the Charleston.
Amongst the running jokes is Zellweger’s oldest son, played by Rendall, wants to be an actor. Each town they move to, he gets a part in the school play. But he never gets to perform in front of an audience. In once instance, they move before play night. In another, the play is about to start when it is announced a tornado has been spotted and everyone must exit to the school basement.
It’s hard to fathom all that happens to this trio, including Zellweger’s almost marriage to a hardware store owner and the surpise reason she doesn’t.
The kicker is this isn’t exactly fiction. George is telling the story and George really exists today. I won’t reveal his identity although a search on the Internet will get you the answer fairly quickly.
It would be more fun to go for the ride from New York to California with the Zellweger character and the two sons and learn his identity at the end of the film.
“My One and Only” is a wonderfully human, beautifully nostalgic piece of cinema. The film is truly a hoot!

MY ONE AND ONLY • Directed by Richard Loncraine • Written by Charlie Peters • Runtime: 108 minutes • Rated PG-13 for sexual content and language • 3 1/2 stars out of 4