Owen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticAs an actress, Kelly Preston, who died Sunday at 57, was the soul of likability, and that’s no small thing.
When she showed up in a movie, she lit it up; she also grounded it. (She had an earthly radiance.) Just think of the scene in “For Love of the Game” where she meets Kevin Costner’s aw-shucks baseball pitcher.
Her rental car is stalled by the side of the road, and he stops to help her, all shaggy jockish gallantry. It’s a meet-cute moment, though the offhand way that Preston bristles at being rescued lends it a contemporary vivacity.
Then, this being a traditional (and actually rather good) Hollywood movie, he melts her resistance. Just as she has already melted his.
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