Broadcast News

Broadcast News (1987) was written and directed by James L. Brooks, one of the creators of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, which may be the greatest sitcom ever made. Brooks returned to the newsroom comedy format with Broadcast News, but with far less success. The characters in this film--there are three main ones, played by Holly Hunter, William Hurt, and Albert Brooks--somehow seem more sitcomish than the characters on Mary Tyler Moore, who were richly developed even in the show's first season, and became even more layered as the show progressed. It's apparent that Brooks, who transitioned into movies after decades of working on the small screen, was unable to create characters who worked on a cinematic level. Instead, each of them is a kind of mishmash of various yuppie traits and psychological problems.

The film opens with short introductions to the main characters as children, showing us the traits necessary for their future careers manifesting themselves even in grade school. Hurt's character, the handsome but intellectually inferior anchorman, struggles even then to compete at an academic level, and complains that he'll never succeed in life because people only like him for his looks. Holly Hunter's character, a Southern girl who's already planted in front of a typewriter, shows her spitfire zeal for telling stories and seeing beneath the surface of communication, and Brooks's character is the typical egghead kid that nobody likes.

So the film establishes these rather obvious characters and then sets them at work in a newsroom together. But it's difficult to believe that William Hurt struggles to keep up intellectually, especially because he comes to Holly Hunter, who's the producer, and complains to her that he doesn't measure up. Somehow, his self-awareness and his ambition to improve make him a less interesting character. He's almost a Ken Doll of banality. If he were Ted Baxter from The Mary Tyler Moore Show, the lovable narcissistic buffoon, we'd at least have something to laugh at.

And Albert Brooks, who made a pretty good living in the 80s playing cynical, sarcastic, smart yuppies (see Lost in America), grates on the nerves. His cockiness is a turn-off. He's more obviously arrogant than William Hurt's character, who may hide his arrogance behind a mask of fake-humility. However, he's intellectually honest, and the movie and James L. Brooks want us to prize this above all other qualities. And that's why Holly Hunter's character is so torn between the two men: One of them is handsome and "needs" her to help him be a better thinker, and the other one is smart and goes out of his way to value her as his equal. But these are such cookie-cutter 80s characters, and in so many ways, Broadcast News is such a cookie-cutter 80s movie, that I found myself increasingly less interested in the whole affair.

With Joan Cusack, Jack Nicholson, Robert Prosky, and Lois Chiles.

Batman

Like Superman, Batman (1989) suffers a little because its villain is more dynamic than its hero. But director Tim Burton masterfully builds up the atmosphere in this imaginative and smashing piece of entertainment. Burton's Batman represents a sort of happy medium for me: it's not as campy as the 1966 Adam West film, and it's not as humorless as Christopher Nolan's Batman films. It's got both the camp and the seriousness in proportion.

Michael Keaton plays Bruce Wayne/Batman, and it's interesting to see such reserve from the actor who played Beetle Juice in Burton's previous film. Keaton seems to represent both ends of the spectrum with these two performances. As Beetle Juice, he was zany and utterly off-kilter (yet controlled). As Batman, he's perhaps a bit underwhelming. But he gives Bruce Wayne a certain amused quality when he interacts with journalists and police, as if he's having a good joke--not so much at their expense as without their knowing about it.

Jack Nicholson might be too easily praised for his work in Batman. We all know he's good at playing a psychopath, and in particular he plays characters who go insane but were never believably sane to begin with (e.g. The Shining). Still, it's hard not to be pleased with his performance as the gleefully maniacal Joker. He gets almost all of the funny lines in the script (by Sam Hamm and Warren Skaaren), and he gets the flashiest clothes. He's at his best when he's doing a clownish little dance as he shoots crime boss Jack Palance (for revenge), or when he makes some ridiculous joke and you can see his own face register the fun he's having.

Kim Basinger plays Vicki Vale. She's not a particularly strong actress, but viewing the film this time around, I was struck by the fact that her weakest moments occur when she has a crummy piece of dialogue to deliver, such as "I just have to know if we're gonna try to love each other." I don't think anyone shy of Bette Davis could make much out of that kind of writing, so it's not fair to blame Basinger entirely. With Michael Gough as Alfred, Tracey Walter, Robert Wuhl, Pat Hingle, Billy Dee Williams, and Jerry Hall. The vibrant, memorable score was composed by Danny Elfman. 126 min. ★★★