i vote for "Will probably vote for Broadcast News, even though its conclusions are facile."
― omar little, Monday, 10 August 2009 23:38 (sixteen years ago)
-It must be nice to always think you're the smartest person in the room.
-No, it's awful.
― Eazy, Thursday, 13 August 2009 23:54 (sixteen years ago)
spanglish is such a terrible, offensive movie but if it's on tv i will always watch it for that one scene with the SANDWICH
― horseshoe, Thursday, 13 August 2009 23:57 (sixteen years ago)
Broadcast News is finally a bit of a mess. The movie is very unfair to the William Hurt character, and seemingly pretty confused about him as well. He's set up by the plot to be nothing but vapid good looks, but that's not the character Hurt is playing. He's not an idiot. Whether Hurt's performance is the only thing that conveys that, or if it's also kind-of in the script, I'm not sure.
What seems clear about him, though, is that he's not a hysterical clothes-rending drama-queen control-freak, which the other two main characters are. Albert Brooks is good with a zinger, but he's also an infuriatingly self-righteous prick. How does this guy not get punched in the face every week or so? And by the end, the Holly Hunter character is *completely* unsympathetic. We're supposed to relate to her falling for Hurt, but we never are really shown what she could see in him. If she's only reacting to his supposedly legendary looks and charm, how does that go in the plus column? And as if that's not bad enough, at the end of the movie she can't just let him go. No, she has to show up at the airport for no reason other than to throw a public hissy fit. Who does that, aside from a complete psycho?
Maybe the opening sequence is the whole point -- that these three people are all still basically the same as when they were children. Ok, fine. But I think we are clearly meant to sympathize with the Hunter and Brooks characters, while the Hurt character is the only one who seems capable of humility at all. Holly Hunter is right, it IS awful to always think you're the smartest person in the room. Awful for you, and even moreso for everyone else. But we're supposed to think these people have journalistic integrity, and thus sympathize with them? Are we? I really don't know. If the point of these two characters is that people who are good at this kind of job are all insufferable jackasses... well, you've left the audience with very little to work with.
― or have I become completely absurd? (kenan), Friday, 14 August 2009 02:16 (sixteen years ago)