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*** This review may contain spoilers ***
"Wishing Well" should have been the kind of frothy comedy Miss Doris Day and Mr Rock Hudson thrived on 50 years ago but unfortunately no one told Mr Jason Young who plays the widowed owner of a small town newspaper as if he was Willie Loman.Miss Ladd as the ace reporter from the Big City on a "punishment assignment" to Wishing Well,Illinois,to write a story about the,er,wishing well,takes her role slightly less seriously,but,sadly,is no more believable. Add a cute kid and a cute oldster (Mr Borgnine)and the splendid Miss Kellerman and you ought to get at least a fairly diverting movie,but "Wishing Well" fails to told the attention because just when the tempo starts looking up,along comes Mr Shaughnessy to drive us all into the slough of despond. Having been assigned to Wishing Well,Miss Ladd wakes up one morning,and,due to the machinations of the wishing well,finds that she is not the hot reporter from the Big City but a recent hire for the ailing paper that is about to be sold to a multi - conglomerate. She soon comes under the spell of the small town and - there's a surprise - the newspaper owner himself and his cute daughter. Due to the further machinations of Wishing Well's wishing well she returns home in triumph,gets made editor of the celebrity magazine she works for,but,there's a lesson here,beware of what you wish for,because in the midst of the concrete canyons she pines for the whiteboard houses and picket fences.And the newspaper owner - obviously. That it all ends happily should surprise nobody,but it seems to take an awfully long time to get there. "Wishing Well" is not really a bad movie,more a "so what?" movie that might find it hard to claim a niche in an overcrowded market.But if you like "magic" stories about the superiority of small town values and the opportunity of starting afresh,it may well appeal.
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