Changing Habits Reviews

CHANGING HABITS is an innocuous serio-comedy about a maladjusted, struggling artist who matures with the aid of a compassionate suitor and sagacious nuns. Short on guffaws and long on exposition, this fact-based yarn about psychological healing annoys viewers with a heroine whose self-centered antics are supposed to be an expression of her winsome free-spiritedness. Aspiring painter Soosh Teague (Moira Kelly) doesn't want to depend on handouts from her father, renowned artist Theo Teagarden (Christopher Lloyd), whom she blames for her mother's suicide. Turning her back on Theo, independent Soosh supports herself by shoplifting, ripping off the boutique where she works, and getting room and board at a convent in exchange for providing minor care for elderly residents. She spends her free time painting a highly personal mural in the convent basement. When Soosh is caught stealing art supplies, the store's good-natured owner, Felix Shepherd (Dylan Walsh), agrees not to prosecute her if she will date him. Although Soosh resists Felix's affection, he wins her over. When the Bishop (Bob Gunton) threatens to sell the religious order's residence, the resourceful Mother Superior (Eileen Brennan) calls attention to the rushed-through sale by publicizing Soosh's expressive mural. After doing a little research, Felix provides Soosh with some startling information about her mother's death: depressed by a failed writing career and addicted to drugs (factors which led to Theo's alcoholism and neglect), Soosh's mom nearly killed her daughter as well as herself. Reconciled with her unfairly maligned father, Soosh can now respond to Felix's courtship wholeheartedly. Knowing her painting helped save the convent, Soosh moves in with Felix. Based on the life of Sheila Rossini, CHANGING HABITS is hell-bent on seducing viewers with examples of Soosh's kooky hand-to-mouth survivalism. We're meant to appreciate how far Soosh journeys, from antisocial misfit to model citizen. But her contrived eccentricity seems as bogus as the twinkling piety of her nun-mentors, a batch of cute holy women right out of THE SINGING NUN (1966). Too many script incidents are derivative of other feel-good flicks, e.g., Soosh opens up to a needy senior citizen who falls out of bed nightly to get attention. On the plus side are Kelly's caustic delivery and Walsh's soft-spoken charm; their rapport creates the atmosphere for a passable romantic comedy that stubs its toe on a "daddy dearest" soap opera of negligible interest. (Extreme profanity, adult situations, sexual situations, substance abuse.)