I remember when I saw this in a movie theater, decades go. This happens, that happens, oh, look what happened there, what do you think will happen? Years pass, and now I appreciate this film as a kind of character study of a man who takes a risk to start again.
Dustin Hoffman swallows his lines - this is so distracting as to make some of his acting unwatchable. He can 'emote,' he can react, he can display nuances of feeling, but that voice that swallows every sentence starts to annoy. He only rises out of that phlegmy register when he has to shout or whisper. William Hurt unfortunately swallows his lines, too. But here, it serves him well to sound, as his wife describes him, 'muffled.' It is part of his character.
Geena Davis' character is his perfect foil with her brash singing and stubborn demands. It's not that her character acts like this with some unique charm - it is that her character acts this way at all. Plowing forward, through the rejection. She holds back and suffers her indignities silently and then regroups. Back into the fray she jumps, no matter whether welcomed or not.
Now, these days, after years of not seeing the film, it is not about what happens. It is all about what these characters contemplate and what they expect, and what they deny. What their feelings lead them to.
That's the difference when watching this film again, older. Oh, yes, and there is that issue of children, too.