What if you were asked to spend three years in a Malaysian prison on a drug rap to save a friend you haven't seen in two years? Lawyer Beth Eastern (Anne Heche) puts that question to Sheriff (Vince Vaughn), a New York limo driver, and Tony (David Conrad), an engineer. Their pal Lewis (Joaquin Phoenix) has been caught with hashish that the trio shared during a vacation in Penang, and he will be executed in eight days if they don't return to paradise and share the rap.

What if only one man returns? What if reporter M.J. Major (Jada Pinkett Smith) prints the story and angers Malaysian authorities? What if Sheriff and Beth fall in love? More to the point: What if director Joseph Ruben didn't resort to B-movie suspense tricks? What if the fine cast wasn't saddled with a shamelessly contrived script by Wesley Strick and Bruce Robinson? What if Heche and Vaughn — generating the erotic heat that Heche and Harrison Ford couldn't manage in 6 Days, 7 Nights — transcended these flaws on the sheer force of their sexual combustibility? Then Return to Paradise would be a better movie, that's what if.

“Help Me”

Joni Mitchell wrote and recorded this song for her album Court and Spark, but she had to switch from her regular band to make the song sound exactly the way she wanted. "I had attempted to play my music with rock & roll players," she told Rolling Stone. "They’d laugh, 'Awww, isn't that cute? She's trying to teach us how to play.'" Mitchell switched to a jazz band, Tom Scott’s L.A. Express, and scored the biggest hit of her career in the process.