Reviewing Broadcast News (1987)

Jane Craig (Holly Hunter) is a talented segment producer for a local news show at a Washington D.C. network. Her best friend, Aaron Altman (Albert Brooks), is a good hearted news-writer who’s had a crush on her for years. Tom Grunick (William Hurt) is a very good looking guy who unfortunately is the personification of everything Jane hates about broadcast news nowadays: he’s incompetent, and not well educated and smart enough to work on the industry. But surprise! She falls in love with him anyways.

The movie was written, directed and produced by James L. Brooks, who just a few years prior to “Broadcast News” co-created and wrote “The Mary Tyler Moore show” (series 1970-77) and “Terms Of Endearment”(movie, 1983), both productions have clear connections to this movie, that didn’t impress as much it was expected at the time it came out despite dragging out some loud laughs from the audience.

The story follows those three characters and their complicated relationships with each other. The biggest story problem with it is that it tries to be more than just a regular “laugh your ass off and forget logic” type of romantic comedy, it tries to be a funny yet critic portrait of the world of broadcast news, and it fails miserably, mostly because Brooks didn’t know yet how to create that kind of movie, having just left tv at the time it was made.

Talking about character creation and development, none of the characters seemed to grow at all during the movie, but what bothers the most is Tom, Hurt’s character: He’s supposed to be incompetent, but charismatic; romantic, yet too impulsive; someone to be hated, but still lovable. The description is so confusing that despite Hurt’s best efforts to make him believable and somewhat realistic, the character just makes no sense, and is completely unpredictable in the worst way possible.

Jane also bothers me. She has a very important decision to make in the movie, and it is whether she will stay with Tom, Aaron or neither of them. During the whole movie she expresses many times her desire not to be with her best friend in a romantic way, so that option is basically off the table already as the movie approaches the end and a major change happens within the network where they all work. Her desire for Tom grows despite all the signs that he isn’t the right person for her.

The decision comes at the very last minute, and even though I’m not telling you how the story ends, I must say her decision is based on something purely nonsensical, that happens all the time specially in their industry. That should’ve been taken into account when creating the characters and the story itself, just another sign of how unprepared the crew was to make this a critical comedy.

In the end, the movie (despite being very funny and a good option to watch on a sunday when you want a good laugh) fails miserably in it’s attempt at criticism, with characters that don’t evolve and, in some cases, don’t even make sense. I’m giving it a 6 out of 10 for the good laughs. If you want to give it a try, this classic of the 80’s is available now on Netflix CA.

Ghostbusters

The Ghostbusters remake, directed by Paul Feig (Bridesmaids), has been making a lot of noise since way before it’s release last week. The trailer for the movie has been one of YouTube’s most disliked videos ever, and all it’s new stars have been trying to get people to chill about the changes in the plot since it came out. I talked a little bit about this here, in case you want to read it. Some things I said about the movie back then, only going by what the trailer shows, were absolutely correct, but I have to admit that the actual thing surprised me a lot in a good way and I liked it a lot more than I expected to.

Following the same train of thought as the original movie, “Ghostbusters” takes us back to New York where a ghost has just been seen inside an old mansion. The owner of the place, scared to death, contacts paranormal enthusiasts Erin Gilbert (Kisten Wiig), Abby Yates (Melissa McCarthy) and Jillian Holtzmann (Kate McKinnon) who start investigating right away, but everything goes wrong when their bosses figure out that they’ve all been investing time and money studying ghosts and paranormal events, which leads them into opening their own business to handle ghosts and paranormal studies. Eventually, they end up meeting Patty (Leslie Jones), a subway employee who knows the city like the palm of her hands and decides to join the team.

Together, the group looks really badass. Both of them have unique knowledges of different subjects that compliment each other. Even Patty who’s the most “common” of the group knows so much about the history of New York that, even though she’d not a scientist or anything, she fits right in. The chemestry between the actual actresses on scene is also ok, but not great. There are many “bonding moments” that do not work at all.

The beginning of the movie, I must say, is so cool! It totally gets you going with one great joke after the other, but that momentum does not carry throughout the movie that suffers a lot from the forced nostalgia imposed by the crew. I mean, when the logo first shows up I thought it was brilliant, but that was already enough. I just think that if Feig was to own his decision of changing so much of the original movie to do this remake, he should’ve just picked something from the 1984 movie, like the logo+song bundle, add that just to satisfy some old fans, and forget about everything else. I really agree with what Jon Negroni said on his blog about this: The flow of the movie suffers a lot from all those cameos that the screenwriters and the director tried to fit in there.

Impressive enough was the fact that Chris Hemsworth’s character “Kevin” was not that big of a deal as I expected. I genuinely thought that his good looks and no brain, and Wiig’s character thinking he’s too cute to be true  would be too much for the movie, but that wasn’t the case at all. The fact that they comment on his good looks, even Kevin towards the end of the movie, adds to the comedy in a very nice way. Also, the fact that the Ghostbusters are all women does not make any difference in the movie at all.

As I said before, don’t expect the momentum of the few first minutes to drag out through the entire movie because that does not happen, and you’ll find yourself wondering how much longer you’ll have to wait until the ending sequence finally starts. The jokes start to look bad, there’s some really weird editing in some very important scenes when you don’t have time do swallow the information you’ve just been given because the scene cuts way too soon, there’s a lot of dancing for some reason as well… And these are all things that do not work.

On the other hand though, there are so many things that work so well it surprised me even, like the 3D VFX and animation. Every supernatural appearance, the texture of the ghost in the end scene, the mirrors (you’ll know what I’m talking about once you watch it) all those things are made to perfection. Very nice 3D work indeed. Also, I loved Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy already, but the other two actresses that I didn’t know also did a fantastic job, specially Leslie, who is hilarious I must say.

Overall the movie works just fine. The female Ghostbusters are going to be really good role models for young girls, and I think it’s a movie that both kids and adults can enjoy. The ending is very cliché, but also very sweet, and the movie sends a good message to all the kids out there about friendship and self acceptance. I’m giving it a 70. Now go watch it!

P.S.: There is an after credits scene that sets the stage for the next movie of the franchise you won’t manna miss.

P.S.2: The movie is dedicated to Harold Ramis (the writer of the original Ghostbusters movie who died in 2014) which I thought was very sweet.