**Some Spoilers**Having lead a very organized life since she suffered a string of emotional and personal disasters in trying to establish a relationship with the opposite sex English proof reader Sarah Winston, Jennifer Beals, has built an imaginary Berlin-like wall between herself and the rest of humanity.
Tuning out her emotions for those she's in contact with Sarah has became a cold and unfeeling person not only towards those she deals with but even her only companion a cute little mutt whom she named Shakespeare. The dog not being as perfect as she expects him to be, he does his business on the carpet and chews up the upholstery, is sent back to the pound to either be readopted or put to sleep.
Looking out her window Sarah spots a number of people assembling to attend a local AA, Alcoholic Anonymous, meeting next door. Spotting this sensitively handsome-looking young man among those attending the meeting Sarah is immediately attracted to him. It takes a while but Sarah finally gets up enough nerve to meet her dreamboat and attends a AA meeting where she ends up sitting next to him. It turns out that the guy that Sarah is in love with, from afar, is Charlie Patterson, Peter Overbridge. Charlie is a recovering alcoholic who's there at the meeting with his teenage son Kit, Gerald Funk, who's also in the process of kicking his alcoholism.
Having no trouble at all striking up a conversation with the very friendly Charlie Sarah quickly becomes part of his crowd of AA members even though, unknown to Charlie & Co., she has no drinking problem. Concerned about her "alchoholism" Charlie as well as his son Kit, who's mom left him and Charlie when he was two, try to get Sarah off the sauce not knowing that she probably may have an even more acute illness then drinking; Trying to strike up a relationship with Charlie and his friends by using their sickness, alcoholism, as cover in her being a fellow alcoholic.
Toching and effective movie about a lost soul in the wilderness who finds her way back to society by becoming involved with people who have, for the most part, bigger problems then she has. Seeing what recovering alcoholics go through turns Sarah into the kind feeling and giving human being that she abandoned years ago.
Always there for her friends when they needed her, in one case preventing a distraught AA member from blowing his brains out, Sarah's secret in not really being an alcoholic in the end became her own undoing. Charlie who fell madly in love with Sarah and wanted to help her recover is flabbergasted when he finds out the truth and is almost driven back to the bottle because of it! It takes as much, maybe even more, courage for Sarah to stand up in front of a room full of recovering alcoholics, including her friends, as an alcoholic confronting, in public, his or her alcoholism in Sarah admitting her duplicity in using their addictions to improve her social life.
In the end it, by coming clean, turned out to be the best thing that Sarah even did. It not only made her a better person with those that she came to know and love at AA but those, including her little dog Shakespeare and estranged younger sister Olivia (Sarah Edmondson), that she so mistreated and was cold to before she ever go involved with Alcoholics Anonymous.
Tuning out her emotions for those she's in contact with Sarah has became a cold and unfeeling person not only towards those she deals with but even her only companion a cute little mutt whom she named Shakespeare. The dog not being as perfect as she expects him to be, he does his business on the carpet and chews up the upholstery, is sent back to the pound to either be readopted or put to sleep.
Looking out her window Sarah spots a number of people assembling to attend a local AA, Alcoholic Anonymous, meeting next door. Spotting this sensitively handsome-looking young man among those attending the meeting Sarah is immediately attracted to him. It takes a while but Sarah finally gets up enough nerve to meet her dreamboat and attends a AA meeting where she ends up sitting next to him. It turns out that the guy that Sarah is in love with, from afar, is Charlie Patterson, Peter Overbridge. Charlie is a recovering alcoholic who's there at the meeting with his teenage son Kit, Gerald Funk, who's also in the process of kicking his alcoholism.
Having no trouble at all striking up a conversation with the very friendly Charlie Sarah quickly becomes part of his crowd of AA members even though, unknown to Charlie & Co., she has no drinking problem. Concerned about her "alchoholism" Charlie as well as his son Kit, who's mom left him and Charlie when he was two, try to get Sarah off the sauce not knowing that she probably may have an even more acute illness then drinking; Trying to strike up a relationship with Charlie and his friends by using their sickness, alcoholism, as cover in her being a fellow alcoholic.
Toching and effective movie about a lost soul in the wilderness who finds her way back to society by becoming involved with people who have, for the most part, bigger problems then she has. Seeing what recovering alcoholics go through turns Sarah into the kind feeling and giving human being that she abandoned years ago.
Always there for her friends when they needed her, in one case preventing a distraught AA member from blowing his brains out, Sarah's secret in not really being an alcoholic in the end became her own undoing. Charlie who fell madly in love with Sarah and wanted to help her recover is flabbergasted when he finds out the truth and is almost driven back to the bottle because of it! It takes as much, maybe even more, courage for Sarah to stand up in front of a room full of recovering alcoholics, including her friends, as an alcoholic confronting, in public, his or her alcoholism in Sarah admitting her duplicity in using their addictions to improve her social life.
In the end it, by coming clean, turned out to be the best thing that Sarah even did. It not only made her a better person with those that she came to know and love at AA but those, including her little dog Shakespeare and estranged younger sister Olivia (Sarah Edmondson), that she so mistreated and was cold to before she ever go involved with Alcoholics Anonymous.
