While on the campaign trail, politician Patrick Dalton (Dudley Moore) strikes up a friendship with young Nicole Dreyfus (Katherine Healy) and her mother Charlotte (Mary Tyler Moore), a wealthy cosmetics magnate. Nicole spends her time training as a dancer but begins applying her energy to Patrick's campaign. When Patrick wonders why Nicole isn't in school, Charlotte discloses that the girl has leukemia and isn't expected to live long.
Eventually, Nicole convinces Patrick and Charlotte to take her to New York City for the holidays, even though this means more time that Patrick will spend far from his already-estranged wife and son. Nicole's dream to dance the lead role in The Nutcracker comes true when she's allowed to perform in a rehearsal at Lincoln Center, but will she survive the vacation? And can Charlotte and Patrick reconcile their feelings for each other when he's already got a family?
Oscar Wilde once observed that "one would have to have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing," and that's how I feel about this awful, goopy Christmas movie about a rich little girl who can feel the grim reaper breathing down her slender neck. As created by Healy, screenwriter David Seltzer, and director Tony Bill, Nicole Dreyfus is such a phony character -- equal parts obnoxious precociousness and misty-eyed sentimentality -- that you'll find yourself impatiently awaiting her demise. And Moore and Moore don't help matters, sparking all the chemistry of Dick Armey and Barney Frank between them; the fact that Dudley's character is technically philandering on his long-suffering wife doesn't make him any more likable. So why is Six Weeks worth a look? Because it's hilarious in that way that only bad movies dealing with super-serious subjects can be. Six Weeks is the sort of film where dying of leukemia equals being completely healthy until that moment where the patient wails, "It hurts!" before suddenly dropping dead. (Think of it as the "cancer-as-teen-heart-attack" method.) Stir up a festive holiday punch, get your most gallows-humor-funny friends together and catch Six Weeks on cable (or on an out-of-print VHS copy), and see if you don't spend weeks -- maybe even more than six -- impersonating Dudley Moore chiding Healy with a hammy, "You're an outrageous girl, Nicole!"
See also:
The Christian-themed film C Me Dance also features a young ballerina with asymptomatic leukemia who drops dead at Christmastime. But first, she battles Satan! This inept drama is such a heavy-handed piece of proselytizing propaganda that even most devoted evangelicals would be embarrassed by it. The film is not without its share of unintentional laughs, but only the hardiest of souls could handle a Six Weeks-C Me Dance double feature.
Fun facts:
· Mr. Moore and Ms. Moore were coming off Oscar-nominated roles (Dudley in Arthur, Mary Tyler in Ordinary People) and Bill had just directed the popular My Bodyguard; the colossal critical and box-office flop of Six Weeks temporarily killed the career momentum of all three. As for Healy -- cast because of her proficiency as a dancer -- she never made another film, although she did graduate from Princeton in 1990 with a degree in Art History.
· This property went through many hands before finally hitting the screen. At one point it was Arthur Hiller directing Audrey Hepburn, Nick Nolte, and Tatum O'Neal, but then Tatum hit puberty. At one point or other, actors connected to Six Weeks included Sylvester Stallone and Jacqueline Bisset, Paul Newman and Faye Dunaway, George Segal, Burt Reynolds, and as the kid, Quinn Cummings and Elizabeth McGovern.
Check back for more of Movieline's 12 Films of Christmas throughout the rest of this week.