Exit to Eden (1994)

  The 90's were a terrible decade.  Just godawful in every respect.  Case in point:  the 90's gave us Exit to Eden, a film where comedienne Rosie O'Donnell dressed in leather fetish gear and cracked one-liners while Dana Delaney and the guy from Strictly Ballroom nakedly cavorted around an island and fat Dan Aykroyd disapproved.  Eat your heart out, 50 Shades.

L.A. detectives Sheila (Rosie O'Donnell) and Fred (Dan Aykroyd) are tracking a pair of diamond smugglers.  They find out that a random photographer, Elliot (Paul Mercurio), has taken pictures of the smugglers at an airport and may be the only person alive to have seen their faces.  Sheila and Fred then learn that Elliot has left the country to be a guest at a private island owned by his therapist (Hector Elizondo) so he can work out his BDSM issues in a non-judgmental setting.  The diamond smugglers (Iman and Stuart Wilson) figure this out as well and everyone decides to go undercover to try and get to Elliot first.  Unfortunately for all parties, Elliot has caught the eye of Mistress Lisa (Dana Delaney) and remains unavailable as he works out his kinks under her tutelage.

I had only ever seen this movie in a very truncated form on cable as a kid.  It wasn't good then.  Seeing the unedited version helped, but didn't really improve it.  There almost seemed to be two distinct movies happening at the same time: one a middling Rosie O'Donnell cop comedy and the other a rom-com with fetish trappings.  It's like the producers knew she couldn't carry a whole film by herself so they wanted to give her breaks where all she had to do was voiceover exposition, like a bad episode of Dragnet.  Delaney tries but her character isn't really fleshed out enough to be the female lead.  Aykroyd isn't given a lot to do, which is a shame since he was probably the most accomplished of the entire cast.

This movie tries to be daring with its depictions but doesn't offer anything in the way of real growth.  It's message is pretty much the same as other 90's rom-coms.  No matter what's wrong, love will fix it.    Unresolved childhood issues?  Get a girlfriend and they go away.  Estranged from your family?  Find a man and all is well.  It's this idea that you can't be a whole person, that you have to find your "other half" and then magically all your problems will disappear.  It's never been a belief I ascribed to, which probably explains why I've never cared for romantic comedies.   Having said all that, watching Exit to Eden isn't the worst way to spend two hours of your life if you're looking for a light comedy.