Doug is a Secret Service Agent who has just completed his stint in charge protecting Tess Carlisle, widow of a former U.S. President, and close personal friend of the President. He finds that she has requested that he not be rotated but instead return to be her permanent detail. Doug is crushed. He wants off her detail. She is very difficult to guard and makes her detail crazy with her whims and demands. Doug returns with no idea of how to continue dealing with her.... (Full plot summary below)
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Doug is a Secret Service Agent who has just completed his stint in charge protecting Tess Carlisle, widow of a former U.S. President, and close personal friend of the President. He finds that she has requested that he not be rotated but instead return to be her permanent detail. Doug is crushed. He wants off her detail. She is very difficult to guard and makes her detail crazy with her whims and demands. Doug returns with no idea of how to continue dealing with her.
Leave your thoughts about Guarding Tess.
| EmanuelLevy.ComEmanuel LevyWe have seen it before: The movie throws together two individuals (Shirley Maclaine and Nicolas Cage) who could not have been more different and then shows us how they learn to respect each other. |
| Hartford CourantMalcolm JohnsonMaclaine's performance as Tess Carlisle, which shifts from polite witchiness to lonely, mildly boozy poignancy, adds up to the only real reason to see this potentially funny and revealing, but actually rather humdrum duodrama. |
| Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertMacLaine and Cage are really very good here. |
| Independent on SundayQuentin CurtisToo often Guarding Tess feels like a sketch towards a movie. |
| Entertainment WeeklyLisa SchwarzbaumThere are no big thrills, only gentle laughs in this light story by Hugh Wilson and Peter Torokvei (Wilson also directed). |
| Deseret News (Salt Lake City)Chris HicksEnough cannot be said about Cage and MacLaine's performances and their obvious chemistry together -- and it's fair to say that they more than make up for the film's lapses. |
| Montreal Film JournalKevin N. LaforestWhen you get down to it, this film ain't much more than a corny melodrama. Still, it's a really involving, deeply sweet film that just makes you feel good. |
| New York TimesJanet MaslinMr. Cage, once again sounding mock-suave and Elvisy, makes the most of his character's fragile cool. |
| Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranThere are lots of laughs in this picture, and though at one point he teeters perilously on the brink of mush and gush, Wilson manages to regain his gently caustic comic footing. |
| Washington PostDesson ThomsonWhat counts is the comic tension between MacLaine and Cage. It's so well done, it doesn't matter how dumb things get. |
