Spoilers are not possible for this predictable mawkish mess: its as obvious as it is brainless. This film is a remake of "No Man of Her Own", a 1950 clunker which starred Barbara Stanwyck.Obviously Ricki Lake is no Barbara Stanwyck, but in this film she comes across as conniving, irritating and unlike-able. Barefoot and pregnant, she is mistaken for Mrs. Winterbourne's daughter in law. This badly- concocted case of mistaken identity basically drives the weak story.Apparently despite a wedding and impending birth, Mrs Winterbourne has never seen even a picture of her son's wife. Did Shirley MacLain read the script before she signed up?Ricki Lake comes off as a tubby little tomboy; as a leading lady in a feature film she makes a great talk-show host. She says "ain't" a lot, just so we remember how impoverished the character was. The romance that blossoms between her and Fraser's character is not believable; together they have zero chemistry. When the jig is up and the deception is uncovered the family instantly seems to accept it because they are just so darned lovable. Maybe if they had used someone like Sandra Bullock and really made an effort to update this stinker of a storyline ... maybe then it might have been bearable.

So.... two hours before bed, I'm bored.... want to watch something fluffy and pointless, something i won't get too invested in before sleep... something i won't really care if i fall asleep during it... but something i haven't seen in a while.Always been a big fan of Frazer, and decided to watch this for a strange reason -- Frazer is ambidextrous and usually writes with his left hand. But I had this memory of him sitting at a desk writing with his right, and I couldn't remember what the movie is. So I'm trying to figure out what it was.... and then remembered him saying one of the lines of the movie. So I hopped on to IMDb and just as I was typing his name I remembered the movie. Looked for it online for a little while, finally found it via good ol' YouTube.I had expected, going in, a really wretched horrible movie; but had hoped to be at least somewhat entertained by Frazer. The man is really a fantastic actor; He always amuses me. So I thought, what the heck -- I watched The Air I Breathe last night, that was heavy. Let's have a Frazer fluffy movie (that's not Blast from the Past or the Mummy because i've seen them so many times) and had hoped to be, at least, mildly entertained.This is not a brilliant movie. But Frazer and MacLaine are absolutely wonderful and make the movie watchable.I just remember this movie coming out around the same time as While You Were Sleeping. Same basic premise -- following a confusion over identity, a lonely girl lies to family about who she really is because the family takes her in and she feels accepted for the first time in her life....This one has a baby in it.So, not original. Let's make that clear. Not believable. Not even that good a movie. However, Frazer and MacLaine are lovely and the movie has its moments -- like when Rikki Lake comes in the room asking MacLaine (who is smoking) who had been smoking in the room and MacLaine half-swallows the lit cigarette to avoid being caught. Or everyone constantly taking MacClaine's alcohol from her as well as her cigs. Cute little moments make it fun-- the Cuban butler getting drunk and dancing in the empty pool over a broken heart is a fun moment too.So, not original, not believable, not really great. But it's not nearly as bad as I remember. Frazer is fab at playing a snarky business man and there is definite chemistry between MacClaine and Frazer that make the whole thing not only watchable, but enjoyable if nothing else for them.A weaker story and someone like Lake who just doesn't have the magical charisma to stand up to someone like Frazer or MacClaine just reminds you what the movie is missing most of the time. If they'd cast someone with more charisma like Sandra Bullock in While You Were Sleeping, I'd have been very interested to see Sandra and Frazer together.Anyway, it's a good fluff, don't expect much and you might enjoy yourself. It's not brilliant, it's not even great, but you know, if you just want a mindless fluff and watch Frazer being snarky it's good enough.

As she gets older, veteran actress Shirley Mac Laine just gets better and better.In this wonderful 1996 film, Miss MacLaine portrays the mother of a son and daughter who are tragically killed in a train wreck. Since she never met her daughter-in-law, this will provide for the wonderful plot.Ricki Lake is a young girl down on her luck. Finding herself pregnant from an abusive hoodlum-like boyfriend, the latter kicks her out when he discovers her condition. It is her good fortune to meet up with MacLaine's son and new daughter-in-law. She is in the train when it crashes and having just put on the dead woman's wedding ring, she is easily mistaken for MacLaine's new daughter-in-law.When she gives birth to the baby, MacLaine is a grandmother! Lake soon finds her dead "husband's" brother (Brendon Fraser) as her love interest. Naturally, seeing Lake in the newspaper with her wealthy "family" brings back the boyfriend to do some blackmailing. The fun really starts when the boyfriend is murdered and some more surprises are revealed.The cast is just perfect and the storyline is done well.

Connie Doyle (played by Ricki Lake) is abandoned on the streets by her former lover as she tells him that she is pregnant and does not want an abortion. Months later, in an advanced stage of her pregnancy and on the way to a shelter for the homeless, she enters the wrong train and gets involved into a chain of coincidences that finally leads to the end that, when the train crashes in an accident, she is mistaken for Mrs. Patricia Winterbourne, another pregnant woman, who loses her life under the shattered heap of steel. Because Hugh Winterbourne had married Patricia only a short time ago in distant Europe, never sent a photograph and is himself among the death victims, the Winterbourne family accepts the mistaken identity, at least at the beginning. Thus, when Connie wakes up at the hospital, she finds herself in a different world, as the member of a wealthy family and with a little son who is enthusiastically welcomed by his supposed grandmother.The main part of the plot that follows this exposition is what should be romantic comedy, from the time on when Connie meets Hugh Winterbourne's brother Bill. However the movie is neither able to create any romantic atmosphere nor does it come up with a single scene that I could find really comic. Of course there are situations that are quite absurd, but they did not make me laugh or even smile, because they were too directly and sometimes crudely contrived.All in all, the movie is not very original. It makes use of a large number of plot elements that we have seen fitting together much better in hundreds of comedies before. And what is absolutely fatal for a romantic comedy is that the central relationship does not work. We see two people come together because it is written in the script, not because they are drawn together by affection.The movie is obviously intended as a kind of Cinderella story for female movie viewers. At least this explains why Bill's part is played by a good-looking Brendan Fraser, while for Connie's part an actress with a more average look and figure was chosen. But it is hard for me to believe that the female perspective would turn this movie into anything worth mentioning, if it were not simply because Brendan Fraser appears on the screen. The only genuine reason for watching the movie could be the fact that Shirley MacLaine plays Grace Winterbourne, Connie's supposed mother in law. She is great as ever and therefore appears misplaced in a weak movie among actors who deliver only second-rate performances.