Date With An Angel is a 1987 fantasy romantic comedy. It followed on the heels of similar films like Splash (1984) and Mannequin (1987).
Aspiring composer Jim Sanders (Michael E Knight) is engaged to cute, classy and sassy Patty Winston (Phoebe Cates). His life is turned upside down when an Angel with a broken wing (Emmanuelle Béart in her first English-language role. ...well kind of) crash lands into his swimming pool.
This film exhibits the following tropes:
- Afterlife Welcome: The Angel’s mission was to escort Jim to the afterlife.
- Angelic Beauty: Well, she is played by Emmanuelle Béart. It helps that the Soft Focus gives the Angel “a heavenly glow”.
- Beware the Nice Ones: The Angel might look and act innocent, but if anyone tries to hurt Jim, she’s not afraid to unleash her wrath on them. Not only does the Angel use the power of Invisibility to throw Patty on the ground and then literally kick Patty’s butt but she also forces rain clouds to remain above the heads of Patty and her father wherever they go.
- Broken Angel: Played straight. The Angel has a broken wing and this causes her to lose her supernatural abilities.
- Confessional: Jim tries to gain the help of the Catholic Church. He winds up, very confused, in a confessional.
- Crazy Consumption: The Angel LOVES french fries.
- Cute Mute: The Angel only rarely attempts to communicate, doesn’t speak English, and is adorable.
- Fish out of Water: Played straight. The Angel has no idea about how to interact with the human race.
- Friend to All Living Things: The Angel is adored by every animal she meets.
- Godiva Hair: The Angel takes a bath in a forest lake. The PG rating survives intact.
- Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Played about as straight as a trope was ever played.
- Hospital Hottie: At the end of the movie we see the Angel in an anachronistic white nurse’s uniform. Needless to say, she rocks it.
- Hypnotic Eyes: The Angel can use her radiant smile and Innocent Blue Eyes to calm down just about anyone or anything.
- Innocent Fanservice Girl: As the Angel is bathing naked in a forest lake (albeit with her body covered by her Godiva Hair, as well as it being obscured by the mist), she’s completely unaware that Jim is watching her from behind the bushes.
- Invisibility: The Angel has this ability once she regains her powers.
- It Is Not Your Time: Jim was dying of a brain tumor. The Angel invoked divine intervention and spared him from his fate.
- Literal Ass-Kicking: “He kicked me in my heinie!” Actually, the Angel kicked her while invisible.
- Love at First Sight: Duh, it’s Emmanuelle Béart.
- Magical Girlfriend: Jim ditches Patty to be with the Angel.
- No Name Given: The Angel is never named.
- Only in It for the Money: Ed Winston is willing to dump his daughter as the face of his company when something prettier comes along. Ouch.
- Recycled In Space: The film is basically Splash with wings!
- Secretly Dying: Jim is taking insane amounts of aspirin during the film. At the end we learn that he was dying from a brain tumor. That’s why the Angel came for him; to escort him to the afterlife.
- Starfish Language: The Angel sometimes speaks in a musical/birdlike language.
- The Alleged Car: Jim's car had a passenger door held shut using a rope. His buddies drive something even worse.
- The Merch: In-Universe, Jim’s friends try to build a merchandise line around the discovery of a genuine angel. (One presumes that this would be staggeringly difficult to trademark.)
- The Peeping Tom: When Jim parts the bushes, he immediately closes them after he’s shocked by what he saw. However, he gets curious and parts the bushes again, where he sees the Angel bathing naked in a forest lake, and he stares at her in awe.
- The Prankster: Jim’s three friends are this, though the prank that opens the movie, staging a fake terrorist attack, has aged like milk.
- The Voice: We hear God speak at the start of the movie.
- Woman Scorned: Jim’s fiancée, Patty, is not at all amused that Jim has found (what she believes to be) a new girlfriend. She degenerates through the course of the movie as the humiliations pile up.
- Your Universe or Mine?: Played straight. The Angel chooses to stay on earth with Jim.
