edward burns tackles his third picture with no looking back , and like his previous two , it is a working-class relationship picture . 
however , unlike his previous work , the film dwells on a more personal story , and with a female protagonist . 
and in no looking back , he stumbles , making a slow , boring film without the spark that enlivened his previous work . 
claudia ( lauren holly ) is a small town waitress who is feeling stifled by her life . 
she's at a turning point in her life , and feels as if she's going nowhere . 
her boyfriend , michael ( jon bon jovi ) , is broke and in a dead end job . 
if she were to marry him , she'd never get a chance to escape this town . 
enter charlie ( edward burns ) , claudia's old flame . 
he skipped town several years before , without any explanations . . . even 
for claudia . 
he has come back to town to see her , and suddenly she is torn . 
should she stay with stable michael , and never escape her hometown . . . or 
should she ignore her instincts and fall for charlie again . 
part of the answer lies in the character of her mother ( blythe danner ) , who fell for the wrong man . . . and has spent her life pining for claudia's father to return . 
now it seems that claudia is about to make the same mistakes . 
at only a little past ninety minutes , no looking back is rather short for its genre . 
unfortunately , it seems much much longer . 
the storyline is simple and uninspired , and there's a lack of energy to the whole proceedings , which makes the entire drama rather tedious . 
edward burns makes a misstep by casting himself in the crucial role as the egomaniacal old flame . 
there's no one to restrain his ego , which reigns unchecked . 
he walks into the room and lauren holly swoons . . . yeah , 
right . 
lauren holly does what she can with her central character . 
but we never understand why her character makes such pathetically bad decisions . . . and 
we never really care . 
bon jovi is the only sympathetic character in the whole movie . 
his acting talents are much greater than they might seem , but he is given a mostly bland and ineffective role to work with . 
there's not much to recommend in no looking back . 
it's not that the film is bad . . . it's 
simply boring . 
there's no zest in any aspect of the film , and no reason to spend ninety minutes watching it .