Here's How You Know

James L. Brooks, writer/director of the excellent Terms of Endearment and Broadcast News and producer of The Simpsons, has a new movie out. It's called How Do You Know (sans question mark).

Sadly, rather than being of the quality of his first two movies (listed above) is in more of the quality of the three that followed them: I'll Do Anything (which began as a musical, with songs by Prince, then was aborted into the Nolte + a kid mess that was released), As Good As It Gets (never a more unfortunately apt title -- plus anything that gives people the idea that Helen Hunt can act can only be the work of the devil) and Spanglish (which, of the three, I prefer most. See "damning with faint praise").

The new mishegoss stars Reese Witherspoon, Owen Wilson, Paul Rudd and Jack Nicholson (in his fourth Brooks movie) as, respectively, a pro softball player, a Washington Nationals baseball player, a businessman being investigated for wire fraud, and the businessman's father and business owner. If you question how any of these characters could be remotely intertwined, you are correct.

Reese's softball player hooks up with the Butterscotch Stallion's baseball player, gets cut from her team and undergoes some sort of lack-of-personality crisis. Paul Rudd is given the pretext of calling Reese (got her number from a teammate) so they can have a pointlessly awkward phone conversation just as he's being served notice of his wire fraud charge. He gets drunk enough to call her back and ask her on a date, during which she asks that they both eat in silence, easily my fave part of the film. Jack Nicholson shows up to hoarsely bellow, hoarsely speak and to look bloated.

I think actors like Brooks because they are always guaranteed lots of lines to speak. This used to be a good thing. So, how do you know your film has too much g.d. dialogue? When the characters speak incessantly and have nothing to say.

The verbosity of Holly Hunter's Jane and Albert Brooks' Aaron in Broadcast News is a function of character. They are a hyper-articulate TV news producer and writer who are professional & personal intimates. Debra Winger & Shirley MacLaine in Terms of Endearment are an only-child daughter & widowed mother whose lives overlap each other's without any successful attempt at boundaries, so they have a great deal to talk (and talk) about.

Reese's jockette is filled with sports platitudes and she has no real intimacy with either of the males who are rivals for her affection. She's not "unlikeable" -- which is what rumors say caused reshoots --  she's just uninteresting and has uninteresting things to say. (Reese has never played a more unlikeable character than Tracy Flick in Alexander Payne's Election -- and she's never given a better performance, either.) Ditto for Paul Rudd, whose vague niceness does not a character make. Owen Wilson's narcissist will live to find another pointy-chinned blonde, so he feels no big loss. Mostly I left the theater worried about the state of Jack Nicholson's real-life health.

Ok, I'm going to stop talking now. Full stop.