The newspaper market continues to shrink (it's that ominous dry crackling you hear when you have the TV volume down low), and the age of smart-mouthed, ink-stained movies like The Front Page and Sweet Smell of Success is long over. Which makes The Paper, about a day in the life of a struggling New York tabloid, almost an exercise in nostalgia. It's a pretty enjoyable one, though. Ron Howard has directed this comedy-drama with a confident smoothness that, in one key scene—editor Keaton frantically fielding calls from his pregnant wife (Tomei), a reporter (Roma Maffia) and an editor at a rival paper (Spalding Gray)—turns positively zingy. Sexy, even: Keaton is turned on because ex-reporter Tomei has turned up a crucial fact for the next day's front-page story.
But after building to this energetic high, The Paper loses its punch. The plot is reduced to telegraphic, almost hysterical headline-ese: medical emergencies, a crazed gunman and a bloody-nosed fight between Keaton and Close, his superior in the newsroom, that plays like a badly staged parody of Fatal Attraction. Also, was it necessary that everyone turn out to be decent, caring, and committed to truth and/or family? This kind of soft-heartedness ultimately robs The Paper's, skillful cast members of their considerable bite. The exception is Duvall, as an editor trying to reconcile with his daughter after learning that he has cancer. It's hard to imagine any other actor who could convey heartbreak and redemption with such sinewy) toughness. (R)
Geena Davis, Stephen Rea
Davis lives—-uneasily—in a working-class section of Brooklyn in this comedy-drama about a young woman's search for self. Her close-knit neighborhood is increasingly confining. The aspirations of her best friend (Aida Turturro) and her longtime boyfriend (James Gandolfini)—marriage and a big family—seem puny. Davis, whose mother mysteriously disappeared when she was small, yearns for more, a point supposedly made manifest when she is seen leafing through a book of French Impressionist paintings and making a visit to a museum. When Davis discovers she is pregnant, the ecstatic Gandolfini, her father (Philip Boseo) and stepmother (Jenny O'Hara) start planning the wedding. Davis, meanwhile, starts an affair with Rea, a winsome lawyer, and calls off the nuptials. When the baby is born and Davis learns that Rea is not in for the long haul, she is forced to deal with a new and difficult life, as well as a long-kept family secret. Although Davis gives a determined performance, Angie, alas, is as unfocused and directionless as the title character. The movie catches fire only in the scenes with Davis and Rea—and even some of those strain belief. (R)
Judy Davis, Kevin Spacey, Denis Leary, Glynis Johns
This is a Disney-organization movie in which the hero not only tells his mother to shut up, he tells her, "Shut the f—k up!" That whirring sound we hear is Uncle Walt revolving in his vault.
This frantic, vulgar comedy relies pathetically on F-word "humor" and the snarly, all-attitude style of standup comic-pitchman Leary. Leary plays an inept burglar who kidnaps Davis and Spacey. Leary ends up arbitrating their arguments because they bicker so much—with each other, their son (Robert Steinmiller Jr.) and relatives, of whom the saddest sight is the once-elegant Johns as Spacey's mother.
The reliably obnoxious Leary drains all the potential playfulness from his role, leaving pros Davis and Spacey the burden of carrying him through the film, which they do, using witty body language and their expressive faces. While director Ted Demme (the nephew of director Jonathan Demme) seems to be trying to impose a Home Alone tone, he only succeeds in lending an air of desperation, with lame subplots blundering into the picture. (R)
Paul Hogan, Cuba Gooding Jr., Beverly D'Angelo
Charm can carry you far in life—and even farther in movies. Hogan. the aging Australian hunk who a decade ago promised to slip a shrimp on the barbie for visiting Yanks and who cleaned up at the box office here in '86 and '88 with his two Crocodile Dundee movies, is such a charming guy that he almost has you believing that this modest comic western, which he wrote and coproduced, is better than it is.
Jack, which follows the high jinks and adventures of a vain older gunfighter (Hogan) and his mute younger sidekick (Gooding Jr., guilty here of mugging outrageously and otherwise behaving like a cartoon character), is a happy surprise after Hogan's anemic last effort, 1990's Almost an Angel. Although not exactly up there with Cat Ballou and Blazing Saddles in the spurs-and-yucks pantheon, the movie has infectiously high spirits and some amusing bits, such as the farsighted Hogan's being unable to tell the $100 bills from the singles when he robs a bank.
Hogan's fellow Aussie, Simon Wincer, directed with the same warmth he brought to Free Willy. There are a couple of mildly suggestive sex scenes, but generally this is the sort of movie that families can see together—and come away from saying they had a good time. (PG-13)
- Contributors:
- Tom Gliatto,
- Joanne Kaufman,
- Ralph Novak,
- Leah Rozen.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
