It takes just a couple of minutes before you realize there's something truly “off” with this seemingly benign looking, Hemdale-produced romantic comedy which came and went in theaters back in September of 1990.
For starters, the first 40 minutes are entirely dominated by third-billed Shelley Long, playing a romance novelist who tries to hook up her Hodgkin's Disease-recovering brother Gus (Steve Guttenberg) with a suitable female. She finds it, she thinks, in the form of magazine writer Jami Gertz, who for some reason works with a pair of “Twin Peaks” stars (a wasted Kyle MacLachlan and even less visible Madchen Amick, who must've hit the cutting room floor), presumably on hiatus from the first season of the David Lynch series. Gus, however, isn't exactly sexy: with a horrific bald cap and fat padding, Guttenberg looks dreadfully unattractive (just wait until you see the other “fat suit” he dons for a Gertz hallucination), so Long decides it's up to her to turn him around. Putting on a “Mad Max”-like biker suit and mullet – and an Aussie accent of course – enables Gus to become the kind of '80s man Gertz is interested in – though it's less like the character undergoes a convincing transition than it is Steve Guttenberg just deciding it's time to act like, well, Steve Guttenberg.
Maybe this adaptation of Sarah Bird's book (she scripted it herself) read better on paper, but under the direction of British director Malcolm Mowbray, “Don't Tell Her It's Me” – which was originally known under the book's title as “The Boyfriend School” – is utterly, completely bizarre. Comical asides which probably were funny in the book become overly cartoonish on-screen, while the characters – with the exception of Gertz, who seems to be the only one inhabiting a normal person – are too broad and bombastic to be believed. One can also assume Long is Bird's alter-ego, as there's so much of her in the movie that the picture's main narrative focus is never fully established until it's nearly half over. Add in Michael Gore's score -- a times treacly, at others melodic and lovely -- and you have all the ingredients for one of those misfires stacked with talented actors all capable of better.
Code Red's Blu-Ray (1.85) hails from a solid 2K master and looks good, though the stereo sound erroneously unfolds into all-channel stereo when you attempt to play it back as matrixed surround. Extras include a brief alternate credits sequence using “The Boyfriend School” as its on-screen title and the trailer (note: “The Boyfriend School” appears to be still used as the movie's title on streaming and apparently overseas).
