Year of the Comet ** (1992, Tim Daly, Penelope Ann Miller, Louis Jourdan) – Classic Movie Review 11,386

Director Peter Yates’s 1992 romantic adventure comedy thriller film Year of the Comet follows a chase around the 1811 most valuable bottle of wine in history, and stars Tim Daly, Penelope Ann Miller, and Louis Jourdan, and is written by William Goldman and produced by Alan Brown and Phil Kellogg.

To explain the awkward title, previously known as A Very Good Year, the wine was bottled in the year of the Great Comet of 1811, one of the best years in history for European wine. Year of the Comet tells you nothing about the film at all, and even the 1984 sci-fi comedy horror zombie film Night of the Comet.

Goldman said he was inspired to write the film by his love of red wine, and a desire to do a romantic adventure comedy thriller like Charade (1963), Yates said: ‘Wine is really the hero of this film.’ Sounds great, doesn’t it. But the film is beset with problems, from scripting, editing, pacing to Daly’s authority-undermining Seventies-style moustache. The dialogue, characters and plotting are all weakly developed, and the screenplay is a real disappointment from William Goldman.

The main cast are Penelope Ann Miller as Margaret Harwood, Timothy Daly as Oliver Plexico, Louis Jourdan as Philippe, Ian Richardson as Mason Harwood, Nick Brimble as Jamie, Shane Rimmer as T T Kelleher, and Timothy Bentinck as Richard Harwood.

Yates is good with actors. There is nothing wrong with the star chemistry and all the performances, or the scenery, or the fascination with red wine.

Miller plays Margaret Harwood, mousy daughter of wine merchant Sir Mason Harwood (Richardson). She discovers a magnum of vintage 1811 wine with Napoleon’s seal on it. Sir Mason offers it to his best customer, T T Kelleher (Rimmer), who sends his friend Oliver Plexico (Daly) to retrieve it.

It was filmed on location in France and Scotland and at Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire, England.

It was a flop. Costing $18 million, it took $2,791,515 at the box office.

Goldman resurrected an unfilmed script he wrote in 1978, got Castle Rock Productions to buy the right back, and suggested his friend Yates to direct. They were friends, living across the street in New York and having worked together on The Hot Rock (1972).

Goldman said the film previewed poorly, but ‘there was nothing we could do because, no matter how we fussed, this was a movie about red wine and the moviegoing audience today has zero interest in red wine.’

Tim Daly recalled: ‘What a bummer, man. I loved that movie, I loved doing it. And the movie just did not work. But I still think I was pretty good. I think it may still hold the record for being the biggest flop in Castle Rock history.’

Goldman had written two successful films for Castle Rock, The Princess Bride and Misery.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,386

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