Up Close and Personal Review by Beth Ann Griese

Search Reviews · Now Playing · All Reviews

Starring	Michelle Pfeiffer, Robert Redford
Director	Jon Avnet
Year	1996
What it's worth		Second Run (See it as part of a double-feature or at a dollar house.)

Michelle Pfeiffer plays Tally Atwater, a young woman with an unstoppable drive to be a TV reporter, because she "wants to be a star." Robert Redford is Warren Justice, the newsroom manager who sees a lot more in Tally than we do, at least at the beginning when she's all hopes and zero knowledge or talent. Warren grooms Tally, teaches her the ropes of reporting. As he does so, he also teaches her to care about the people she's reporting on, how to dig below the surface and come up with a story with real meaning. And, in the process, they fall in love. As Tally's star rises, Warren must decide whether to follow it, when his star has already seen its peak and started falling again.

It's typical of the way the whole screeplay operates that these two never actually say they love each other. It's the obvious conclusion, their actions make it plain, but they never declare their love candidly. The director takes for granted that we will understand what's being said. Subtlety is a good thing, and no movie can be hurt by refusing to dumb down to its audience. But when a movie wants to be subtle, it takes on a bigger challenge of making the audience understand what's going on without skywriting, and that challenge must be coordinated by the director through the entire film, not just in the screenplay. Many times during this movie, the dialogue isn't obvious, but the plot line is. I was able to predict the vast majority of the story just by noting the camera angles, the background music, and other signals that failed to meet the subtlety that the dialogue was shooting for.

The story wants to show conflict, mostly with Warren's fight against falling in love and fight for meaningful reporting on television. (As a side note, the movie is ostensibly about Tally, but actually, Warren is a much more interesting character and the true pivot of the story.) But instead it bulldozes over the wrong points and soft-pedals the right ones. There were a couple of scenes that had wonderful character interaction, but managed to skim over what was happening so badly that I wasn't sure what they were interacting about.

Warren's and, eventually, Tally's fight for journalism that does more than show the glossy and cutesy side of life is the major theme that fails to satisfy. The point of the filmmakers is obvious; journalism too often fails to show the tough, important facts, choosing instead for flashy video and happy statistics that will keep the viewers on their channel. Warren is convinced of it, Tally is convinced of it, but none of the studio executives we see are ever convinced that in-depth reporting is worth losing audiences about. Maybe, coming from a journalism background, this bothered me more than it would other viewers, but a principle is upheld without any suggestion of how it could be followed through with by the characters or in real life. It makes the message fall short.

In all, the acting in Up Close and Personal is stellar. Pfeiffer is, as always, charismatic, and Redford gives an All the President's Men performance for the 90s. Its romance is touching. But its spotty story, and message that ends up being heavy instead of hard-hitting, make it fall short of great entertainment.

	Web www.bethgriese.com

In the Dark is created by Beth Ann Griese. In the Dark and the reviews on it are copyrighted; you may link to any portion of this site, but the contents cannot be copied without permission.