It Could Happen to You (1994) poster
1994 · comedy · drama · romance

It Could Happen to You

Directed by Andrew Bergman1h 41m1994
ElsewhereIMDb6.447kRT75%Metacritic64
  • warm
  • gentle
  • tender
Movie DNA

Warm, steady, gentle comedy / drama, grounded in texture. Redemptive, intimate, tender, hand-scored across twelve axes of taste.

How every film is hand-scored →

Charlie Lang is a simple, kindhearted New York City cop. When he realizes he has no money to tip waitress Yvonne Biasi, Lang offers her half the winnings of his lottery ticket. Amazingly, the ticket happens to be a winner, in the sum of $4 million. True to his word, Lang proceeds to share the prize money with Biasi, which infuriates his greedy wife, Muriel. Not content with the arrangement, Muriel begins scheming to take all the money.

Our read · It Could Happen to You (1994) reads as a warm, steady, grounded comedy · drama · romance entry — gentle in intensity, intimate in scope, tender in temperature, redemptive in outlook. Hand-scored on twelve axes of taste — mood, pacing, weirdness, hope, stakes, humour, reality, density, warmth, auteur, intensity, and era — with a derived palette drawn from its dominant cinematography.

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The shape of It Could Happen to You

Tonight, this looks like

What watching it is actually like.

You want a sweet lottery fairy tale about kindness beating greed in New York.

ends warmyou’ll feel glowing aftersteady all the waygrips by minute 8attention 2/5breezes by
Date nightWith friendsSoloWith parentsKids around

Skip it tonightSkip if Capra-corn sincerity, diner romance, or nineties niceness feels too soft tonight.

DNA · twelve axes

The reading.

Each axis is hand-scored — not derived from votes or genre averages. The marker shows where this film sits; the gradient fill uses the film's own cinematography palette.

Mood · HeavyCosy
Pacing · Slow-burnKinetic
Intensity · GentleExtreme
Weirdness · ConventionalSurreal
Hope · NihilisticRedemptive
Stakes · IntimateEpic
Humour · NoneBroad
Reality · GroundedFantastical
Density · SparseTwisty
Warmth · ColdTender
Auteur · TransparentSignature
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