Sweet Revenge

Carrie Fisher plays a successful, Paris-based attorney forced to pay lots of alimony to the layabout husband she recently divorced.

The judge’s decision has a comic hitch: If the husband, played by John Sessions, remarries, Fisher can stop doling out the dough.

Fisher will do anything to get Sessions remarried, so she hires a fledgling actress (Rosanna Arquette), coaches her in her husband’s likes and dislikes, and sends the actress off to seduce and then marry the lazy sucker.

The idea is a good one, but Janet Brownell’s script isn’t sharp enough, and as a couple, Arquette and Sessions seem like actors faking it.

But there are good elements in Sweet Revenge as well. The mixture of American, English, and French actors makes things interesting — lots of clashing accents and acting styles. And over the past few years Carrie Fisher has become such a pleasure to watch — so confident, intelligent, and funny — that she manages to make amusing many of the slack moments in this cynical little romantic comedy.