While I LOVE Phoebe Cates, I don't think she played up the bitchy part of the character too well. She seems like such a sweet lady in real life and that just bled through. Patty's lines wreaked of "bitch", but the way Phoebe played her, she just seemed like the spurned fiancee. From her point of view, I could totally see how a misunderstanding would arise, but her character was supposed to be spoiled. It felt like the movie was trying to convey that the lead character had lost the motivation for his true passion due to illness and was settling for a life he wouldn't have necessarily chosen had he been in better health. The way Phoebe Cates interpreted her character, it was kind of hard to fathom that she and Jim wouldn't ultimately get together. But this also made Patty look like even worse of a whack-job at the end when her personality took a drastic change for the worse.
I actually did see that Jim was falling for the angel, but he was just trying to do the right thing. This might be another case in which the actor didn't interpret his character's intentions too well. When he said he loved Patty, there should have been a glimmer of doubt in order to promote the idea that he was uncertain of their relationship. Perhaps that would have made the ending a bit more believable for some people. *shrug*
reply
share