review for Coupe De Ville on AllMovie

This comedy from future studio mogul Joe Roth and screenwriter Mike Binder is formulaic and predictable, with a trio of central characters that are more types than flesh-and-blood humans. Nevertheless, Coupe de Ville is a warm, gentle, and good-natured film that wraps up in a surprisingly winning, emotionally satisfying fashion. Of the three young stars, Daniel Stern makes the strongest impression as the rigid, autocratic Marvin, a departure from the actor's usual role of the naïve rookie or blissfully zonked-out airhead. His is an especially notable performance because, like Arye Gross and Patrick Dempsey -- the actors portraying his brothers -- Stern is saddled with a role that's over the top and annoyingly exaggerated at times. It's apt that he's the standout here, as Coupe de Ville, in its nostalgia for a bygone era, bears comparison to the Baltimore films of director Barry Levinson, the first of which, Diner (1982), also starred Stern. It's a shame that Roth and Binder couldn't create a film as observant and emotionally trenchant as those of Levinson; a unique variation of the standard road picture might have been the welcome result.