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Korty’s name was unfamiliar to me before this, but his directorial career is an intriguing hodgepodge of Academy-Award winning documentary, pioneering animation, Hallmark Hall of Fame and Lifetime Channel docudramas… and one of the made-for-television Ewok movies that followed in the wake of Return of the Jedi (the first one, from Thanksgiving ’84, without Wilford Brimley). I can only gather at the threads that might tie those choices together, but he seems to have an affinity for the characters in stories above the plot, and for unabashed sentiment coupled with a respect for human decency at all levels of the social class system.

O’Neal has an essentially thankless role in the sequel. He has to play good and noble and wounded and likable, the widower everyone is rooting for because, well, that Jenny was a hell of a gal, and she’d want him to find someone new to love. He endures unannounced blind dates staged by friends, a particularly awkward night out with his former father-in-law at a singles’ bar, and therapy sessions that arrive at insights that seem far too blindingly obvious for what he is shelling out. Interestingly, the film doesn’t present Marcie as having sacrificed herself as a woman in order to find her place in the male-dominated business world, nor does it condescend to her as having had to become a “ball-buster” in order to command respect and attention. Expectations of Murphy Brown, the 1970s years are banished with Bergen’s wry, sexy, and quietly firm portrayal of a modern woman.

But as I hinted earlier, the real payoff is in the sympathetic treatment of Mr. Barrett (portrayed once again by a delightfully underplaying Ray Milland) and the ultimate reconciliation between father and son, which the prior film set the groundwork for. It comes across as too rushed in retrospect, shoehorned into the finalten0 minutes, leading up to an unexpectedly brief coda and narration from O’Neal when another half hour of plot would seem reasonable. (Blessedly, O’Neal is not forced to utter the lines with which I opened this column. No one, not even the trailer voiceover narrator who does intone them, can make them any less than ridiculous.)

And yet, it becomes important at this point to consider the title (which is not “Love Story 2” or “Another Love Story”) and to take stock of the fact that however unnecessary, slight, and transitory Oliver’s Story proves to be, there is no cynicism at its core. It moves past a love story, as it asks its characters to, and stands looking into the future, not the past, for whatever fleeting happiness might be on its way.

Next time: With American Reunion arriving in theaters, it’s time to take a look back at the sequel that launched a thousand (or so) direct-to-video slices of Pie. A raunchy, raucous look at American Pie 2 and how the quadrilogy as a whole is inextricably bound up with my life, one month from now, right here.

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