A Familiar Slippery Slope

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

Take your choice -- tragedy or a 12-step program. The path to either of the only two possible endings for a story about alcoholism is, dramatically, entirely predictable. So when Alice Green's social drinking starts turning into antisocial behavior in When a Man Loves a Woman, you have an awful feeling that you've been down this slippery slope before.

The skid marks left by dozens of previous books, movies and teleplays show the terrain: innocent children imperiled by drunken carelessness; a steadfast spouse trying to understand and cope; an alarming incident that brings the victim to the edge of self-destruction -- and self-awareness; the decision to seek professional help; the terrors of detox; the fragile return to sobriety and the recriminatory rebalancing of power in a damaged family; and finally the tearful public confession, carrying with it an implicit promise of a responsible future, which offers audiences a reassuring sense that they have once again witnessed a triumph of the human spirit.

When a Man Loves a Woman doesn't miss any of these beats, yet director Luis Mandoki fails to make them resonate. Perhaps the title, which could as easily identify a romantic comedy, tells us something: this movie, written by Ronald Bass and Al Franken, doesn't want to harrow; it wants to ingratiate. As Alice, Meg Ryan never lets drink ravage her; even her hangovers are perky. As her husband, Andy Garcia is unfailingly, rather boringly, stalwart. Well, this is the '90s, when weekends aren't allowed to be lost, only politely postponed.