Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 4-June-06
Spoiler Rating: Medium

The Paper (1994)

"The Paper" begins with Henry Hackett (Michael Keaton) being told by his wife Martha (Marisa Tomei), "You know those days that can change your whole life? This is one of them for us," before he heads off to his job as Metro Editor at the New York Sun where he almost immediately pronounces, "Sometimes you can just smell the horrendously shitty day on the way" to his paranoid coworker McDougal (Randy Quaid) and thus inaugurates a very hectic 24-hour period during which the phone doesn't stop ringing and the air conditioner's broken and he has to strain against multiple deadlines while tackling both social and personal issues (the arrest of two black teens for an apparently race-related murder, a job interview at the prestigious Sentinel, the fact that Martha is going out of her mind with worry and boredom in the last few days of her pregnancy), on top of which he has to placate a dozen griping reporters and play nice with the office's resident Bitch, Alicia Clark (Glenn Close), in the absence of their more levelheaded superior (Robert Duvall) who has problems of his own like prostate cancer and therefore isn't around when the presses start running an inaccurate and potentially damaging headline which Henry and McDougal have to scramble to countermand late into the evening practically over Alicia's dead body and at the risk of getting fired, even though Henry should be with Martha and not just because they had a dinner engagement with her parents, which goes to show that it's hard to juggle work and family and being a good person, sort of like it's hard to juggle lots of characters whose lives flow together into a fast-paced, enjoyable, and cohesive comedy/drama, which is exactly what this is, so while I haven't been impressed with Ron Howard's films of late this reminds me that at one time I admired his ability to handle complex stories with many threads (e.g., "Parenthood," "Apollo 13") and I think this is the best example of them all.

Copyright © 2006 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.