just watch it!

Better Late Then Never

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Christy is a news anchor on SNN, an all-news channel in Chicago. Her boss John "Sully" Sullivan is also her ex. Christy must go do lots of silly stories as part of her role as a journalist, and eventually she decides to take a vacation. That's where she meets Blaine, who is rich and perfect in every way, and Christy wants to move with him to New York City and host a morning show. Sully hates him and plots against him. Meanwhile, Christy has a chance to do something important before she moves on from real journalism. Ike Roscoe is on death row for a crime he didn't commit. Roy Ridnitz is running for governor but played a role in putting Ike away, and it would not benefit him politically if Ike got freed.So how will Ike be rescued from his fate? The second half of this movie is nothing short of insanity, a wacky adventure that really makes this movie worth seeing.Kathleen Turner and Burt Reynolds are good, if not necessarily great. Ned Beatty is over the top. Chris Kimbrough as the governor who could give Ike a reprieve is a moron. And Henry Gibson is great as the poor man who must be rescued because, after all, he didn't do it.Christopher Reeve, on the other hand, is more Clark Kent than Superman. He just never quite achieves what he should. I didn't know who he was, but he didn't quite look like Richard Gere, or David Hasselhoff, or John Corbett. I just never could enjoy his character, except for the bizarre scene where Sully get his revenge.The romantic comedy at the beginning is okay. It's the adventure toward the end that really makes this work.

This is really worth rediscovering - Turner and co really throw themselves into it and (shock) Reeve sends himself up excellently (particularly good in the 'vertigo in the lift' scene.As revealed elsewhere, it's a remake of The Front Page - in fact right now can't think of a better way to spend a rainy afternoon than a double bill of these two in front of a nice fire :-)So - not going to change your life - but I'll cheer you up.

Spoiler This movie should be (but hardly ever is) judged on its own merits as opposed to as a remake of "His Girl Friday" an "The Front Page". It is a fast paced movie full of twists and turns and political satire that I still find hilarious and edgy. Part of what makes it work is that the story takes place at a Chicago-based cable news network. The newspaper, which was regarded as the most up-to-date medium in "The Front Page," is mocked by news anchors as primitive while they check their makeup.Kathleen Turner is Christine Colleran, the tough news anchor with a conscience; Burt Reynolds hilariously plays Sully, her ex-husband/boss who unscrupulously scouts stories while being badgered by the Ted Turner-esque head of the network to put on more "smutless fires". Christopher Reeve plays Christine's one-dimensional yuppie fiance, Blaine Bingham. Henry Gibson makes a surprising turn as the timid Ike Roscoe, who is on death row for killing his son's drug dealer (who happened to be an undercover cop).The story revolves around Roscoe's execution: the gung-ho Attorney General (Ned Beatty) wants Roscoe executed so he can win the upcoming Governor's election. The Governor (a Reagan-esque Charles Kimbrough) wants to pardon Roscoe so he can win the election. TV reporters are scrambling like rats around a carcass looking for a hot (and preferably exclusive) scoop. The only people who seem concerned for Roscoe himself are Christine and Roscoe's attorney girlfriend, Pamela, derisively referred to as "the conscience of America."Meanwhile, Sully is trying to stop Christine from quitting the news business so she can live with Blaine in New York. First, Sully has his interns book all New York-bound flights leaving within the next 24 hours. Then he has Blaine subjected to strip searches and sends the acrophobic Blaine to a skyscraper with a glass elevator. Then Sully tries one last tactic to seduce Christine back into the news business, and subsequently back into his life: to have her do one last interview with Ike Roscoe. It would bring in monster ratings, and oh yeah, it might get the guy pardoned or whatever.And if you're looking for a history lesson, watch Christine talking to Blaine on her "cell phone."

Anyone can make any sort of commentary on how this film didn't live up to its heritage as the "umpteenth" remake of the movie "His Girl Friday", or the original "The Front Page", but in this case, I prefer to take the film on its own merits, especially in light of how things have been since its release.First of all, no one has to get on a soapbox and talk about how the chief supporting actor of this film (Chris Reeve) has been in the time since its release. The movie "Speechless", with Mike Keaton and Geena Davis in my opinion stands as a much better reference point, if one is looking for one, for Mr. Reeve's work before his accident. Instead, I like to look at his role in this as seeing how he was moving away from his Superman stereotype. The man has worked with some of Hollywood's A & B list leading men over the last twenty years, ranging from Michael Caine to Morgan Freeman. While he was no Ralph Bellamy in this film, I don't recall anyone saying he was supposed to be when the film was made. After all, he was only supposed to play the type of character Ralph played in the earlier remake, and if they had wanted Ralph's nod on the film, (Especially since he was the only surviving castmember) why didn't they get him to play the Network Owner's part?Then there is Burt Reynolds' character. While I don't think they gave him the best lines they could have in some scenes, I felt, and still feel that he played the part of the Station Manager/ex-husband in a role that was not out of range for him. However, if you want to sit there and compare him to Cary Grant's role, I ask that you do one thing before you do so. Go out and rent "His Girl Friday", and then fast forward to the scene where Cary goes "Oh, Walter!", and then try to imagine how easy it would have been to get Burt to do that scene in the same way.Finally, but in no means last, there is the heroine of the movie, played by Kathleen Turner. Ms. Turner has always played capable women who can be independent when they need to be, and continued to do so here. One scene of note in this movie is her reaction to the story about kazoo players and the President of the United States at the beginning of the film. When you consider the fact that Hollywood has repeatedly told us that modern broadcast journalism's motto is "if it bleeds, it leads", and they seem to be living up to that on the local news broadcasts, I as a viewer would want the person giving me the news to crack up on a story about Kazoo players, long before they ever did about someone going postal at a Luby's Cafeteria.The point in the movie where one can draw a strong similarity between the original remake and this one begins in the the interview at the prison. The scene here does not play out as a remake of the same lines and dialogue as the original said by new people, and one does have to admit that you can't exactly go in too many different directions with that as part of your storyline.Also, in my opinion, the story does demonstrate much more detail about one thing that the Grant-Russell movie only touched on. There is a changing of the guard going on in the business. The older seasoned journalists in the main story have or are changing positions. Sully has moved on to Producer, and is now fighting a constant battle over lead stories, rather than deadlines. An example of this is where he makes the comment to his boss, in jest, about having a team going all over Chicago looking for "Smutless fires". Christy is also following the "grass is greener" principle, as she is leaving SNN for a job as morning anchor in New York, a show with a Willard Scott-type weatherman and fake furniture.In my opinion, the only ones who really weren't well-developed as well as they could have been were Ned Beatty and Charles Kimbrough's characters. While it was interesting to see a man who would later go on to play a television journalist in a long running TV series (Kimbrough was "Jim Dyle" on Murphy Brown), the portrayal of them as a simple-minded Governor, and a crooked-dealing DA both running for governor seemed to me to be a mixed message over which story should have been covered. Everyone likes a good political debate, but at what cost, or should that be whose cost?