Caroline (Marisa Tomei) has her heart broken yet again. Adam (Christian Slater) is the introverted silent busboy working in the same diner. Then one night, she's harassed by a couple of guys and Adam comes to her rescue. Adam is an orphan who was told by a nun that he has a baboon heart. They fall in love. The two guys come back to attack Adam and in the hospital, he's told that his damaged heart needs a transplant.

This is romance at its most melodramatic. Marisa Tomei is a master at making googly eyes. She has the giggle and the sweetness. Christian Slater is going mostly for the quiet type. They make an appealing couple. The story hits all the girlie fantasy about a silent broody guy who rescues the damsel in distress. And he needs her in return. "You are my peace." It doesn't get more melodramatic than that.

Christian Slater is a young man with rather freakishly long hair who has been raised in an orphanage and now works as a dishwasher in a Minneapolis diner. He rarely speaks and keeps to himself. Marisa Tomei is a waitress in said diner, and Rosie Perez is her earthy but sympathetic sidekick. Slater has developed a crush on Tomei and follows her around at a discreet distance, so when she's attacked while walking home from work he's able to rescue her. Later, her attackers wreak an unpleasant revenge on Slater. All of this brings the two of them together. Slater lets her know, in his recedent way, that he adores her, and she responds by falling for this shy, silent kinda guy. Their love is, how you say, consummated. But there is a problem. Slater was told by the nuns at his orphanage that he's had a heart transplant, with the donor being a baboon. Whether that's the case or not, his heart is now weakened and needs a booster shot, which Slater is unready to undergo. Eventually his heart, simian or hominid, beats its last, but not before he's had a heck of a good time exchanging tender gestures and body fluids with Marisa Tomei.

I can't really tell if this is a particularly well-done example of the genre because I watch so few examples. I could see most of the developments coming, and so would you. And the crooning of Johnny Mathis and Nat "King" Cole's mystical pop song, "Nature Boy," from the 1950s really wasn't necessary. We get the picture. Slater is quiet, shy, and mysterious -- like Montgomery Clift in "A Place in the Sun" -- the sort of man who attracts women, but only in the movies. In real life I would imagine that he would absorb the attention of women who were chiefly neurotics. A research plan for young men who DON'T look like Montgomery Clift: Get a menial job, speak to no one, don't meet anyone's gaze, and see what happens. If you save a co-worker from rape, you might get a Thank You note and a box of chocolates.

Well, I've made sufficient fun of the movie and it's a bit unfair, like stretching the iridescent wings of a butterfly on the rack. It's supposed to be a sweet and endearing story, and it is, even if it's some mutant form of Beauty and the Beast. At least I was able to get into it, though I hadn't expected to.

The "Nature Boy" business was an irritant, and the baboon heart slipped motionlessly by me, but Slater is quietly effective in the role and Marisa Tomei is quite good and thoroughly believable as a sensitive young woman who serves ham and eggs and reads "Catch 22" at home. Rosie Perez is always a kick in the pants too.

The film stands as a beacon of hope for those of us who trudge off to work, looking exactly the way we feel, and yet suffer from an intense desire to find love in an unpromising milieu. Or anywhere else.

Flighty, juvenile romantic concoction, written by Tom Sierchio as if he'd just overdosed on television movies-of-the-week. Marisa Tomei plays a broken-hearted--though incredibly perky--waitress in Minnesota who finds love again with busboy Christian Slater, a guy victimized by the proverbial Hollywood heart condition. Co-producer Tony Bill is also responsible for the film's flaccid direction; he's awfully fond of 'cute' montages and loving gazes in close-up, and yet allows a potential rape sequence to drag on for far too long. The star-leads are absolutely unbelievable in these roles, while Rosie Perez is wasted in a bland "best friend" bit (another cliché). Drippy, dreary, unmoving, and tame. *1/2 from ****