Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

A Non-review by Prof. Popinjay

As some of my recent trivia has suggested, I watched Mr. Destiny starring Jim Belushi, Linda Hamilton, and Rene Russo… also Michael Caine as himself but with magic powers… so just regular Michael Caine I guess.

Of course the elephant in the room I must address and the reason for the recent trivia that threw everyone for a loop was the fact that Linda Hamilton’s character’s maiden name in this film was Ellen Ripley, a pronoun synonymous with Sigourney Weaver’s character from Fox’s Alien franchise. Oddly enough, Linda Hamilton would go on to marry James Cameron who directed the Alien sequel. I have researched this coincidence extensively and so far as I can tell it is purely a coincidence which just absolutely blows my mind. I suspect some swirling space-time eddies are neutralizing quite proficiently around Linda Hamilton. Such is frequently the case around twins. Is it any wonder she’s been in four movies that deal with altered timelines? The answer to that question is 42.

Anyway, enough about my vast knowledge of chronophysics which no one ever asks me about. Let’s talk about Mr. Destiny. This is a cute movie in the vein of “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Jim missed a pitch as a kid during a baseball game and he attributed to it all things bad in his life. As expected he needed to learn than the good in his life which far outweighed the bad could also be attributed to that missed pitch and thus we have our story.

Strange thing is, Jim spends a lot of time not grasping the fact that his destiny is changed thanks to the fantastic bartending powers of Michael Caine and he almost immediately starts trying to manipulate his life back to what it was. It’s these actions that lead to messing his life up again, not some undetected downside to his so called “perfect” life. It’s as if he already learned his lesson before he messes everything up all by his own actions. It makes me think that the course of his life was not so much determined by missing that pitch as a kid but more directed by the fact that Jim was just an idiot. The truth of this was painfully obvious right from the start when he expressed any interest at all in Rene Russo’s character when he was very much married to Linda Hamilton. No amount of Rene Russoes would make me want to trade off a firmly secured Linda Hamilton! This woman destroys terminators like Jack Elmlinger destroys tacos. And this is 1990’s Linda Hamilton, folks, not the tired 2019 Linda Hamilton who wishes she could stop making woke af Terminator films.

Anyway, this was a cute film and made me laugh a lot despite its strange story choices.