Verse
Lucina, Sister Mary
better film would have explored problems of complementar- Ephron can write comedy, and Nicholson and Streep can act ity, not just commitment. it....
...Once she's allowed to be mischievous, established as a comic presence...
...when Streep undercomplains, "You couldn't even use cash, like a normal goes a Caesarian, something about the risks involved in marphilanderer...
...Indeed, comedy was her theatrical trademark...
...Most scenes which left the bedroom to the imagination, the editing excites early in the film are static, even a key episode where Streep, us to want to learn more about the lovers, not simply see more suddenly seized with distrust, delays the wedding by hiding in of them...
...Ephron wrote the screenplay, but omits much of some abruptly sloppy characterization as her madcap father...
...It's good, "kinda...
...It would have been wiser to keep the husband's role small to begin with, or to choose a lesser name to fill it...
...Discovering American Express slips crooning...
...Someone, either Ephron or Director Mike Nichols, erotic shots and domestic snippets of Moore making the bed or also erred by opening the film with Streep and Nicholson's Lowe running out half-naked to grab the morning paper...
...Now I the initial courtship dovetails at this point with the mistake of know why these phones aren't rubbers...
...John Wood also amuses with They took ten phones out, piled a brilliant imitation of Alistair Cooke when Streep fantasizes them in a box in the hall...
...What makes a man like Nicholson tick...
...There are several awful early scenes...
...refrains from a pan, focusing just once or twice on Nicholson...
...Indeed, her heroine, with an exaggerated basso after he learns Streep is pregnant...
...It's the best use of Can't disconnect voices telling food and best moment in Heartburn, the only time it resonates of vacation plans changed to flat with wide significance and attains balanced focus...
...Midway, help finally comes from the Sister Mary Lucina supports, mostly Channing detailing her means of avenging Calling You infidelity, and Catherine O'Hara, who steals all her scenes as a smarmy, gossipy TV journalist...
...Like courtship, rather than the book's more dramatic opening in the suggestiveness of old-fashioned Hollywood romances, medias res, after their marriage and first child...
...The husband is simply The Enemy...
...It is another Big Name Release that brained, and a fine supporting actor, Steven Hill, is given disappoints...
...The mistake offilming like curtains in a breeze...
...When we last see him, I call you...
...That's not Hollywood...
...better film would have explored problems of complementar- Ephron can write comedy, and Nicholson and Streep can act ity, not just commitment...
...played by Meryl Streep, is not well identified as a food colum- Whoever laughs at this scene has fallen into the trap of thinking nist and not even endowed with any real show of wit until it must be funny because The Great Rascal, Jack Nicholson, is midway through the film...
...They film terrible segments in New York novel about her marriage to and divorce from Watergate when Streep first takes flight: she is made to run about scatterjournalist Carl Bernstein...
...No box could hold the silence...
...Going back to the box rascally energy, is reduced to a cipher...
...But the line falls flat, because she hasn't been riage gets through...
...her room...
...But again tires, of arthritis continuous as Nichols shoots the scene statically: just at the moment we want wires on poles, of stores spread to see Streep's effect in the eyes of the other diners, the camera with jellies of children...
...riage, all the while eyeing a Key lime pie...
...Thought her marital woes on Masterpiece Theater...
...her book's naughty zest and acute notations on how large a role They gamble badly when Nicholson sings some baby songs food plays in courtship and cohabitation...
...Editing saves went wrong...
...Instead of ing a "mensch" voice in prose that perfectly balances comedy extended love scenes, the film cuts between a few suggestive and anger...
...used for assignations by her husband, Jack Nicholson, she Childbirth, however, saves Heartburn...
...Perhaps the problem lies in the autobiographical narrative at two points where romances often bog down: sex particularity of the story itself or the author's success in creatand (far more traumatic these days) moving in...
...After a dinner with until I got closer and heard friends, Streep soliloquizes on the burden of trusting in marringing from around the country...
...Your words fluff my rooms . he's left, literally, with nothing to do...
...Okay, but this thin characterization is not as noticeable in Dial tone is working but not prose as in film, where Nicholson, after early displays of his your voice...
...casting the Big Star...
...At this point, star vehicle overwhelms story...
...Ebert claim - the best picture of the year...
...in the rows of their foreheads...
...So what Still, About Last Night has certain strengths...
...TOM O'BRIEN Commonweal: 436...
...Streep provides some zing, especially in a supermarket when, wheeling child about, she spreads mean rumors about her husband's mistress...
...they were rubbers no one claimed The end also achieves some power...
...The fine supporting cast (Stockard Channing, Also refreshing was the use of some local Chicago color...
...our alphabet will know us the way Neither in the film nor in the book is there any attempt to teachers did when we sat explore these questions...
...Richard Masur, Jeff Daniels, Milos Forman) appear initially But About Last Night is not - as Chicago critics Siskel and only as an undifferentiated mass of friends...
...Nichols and Ephron use the crutch of a political dinner to show how Streep suffers HEARTBURN IS based on Nora Ephron's slimly disguised in Washington...
...Why can't some The new phones after teaming husbands with lovely wives and good marriages be faithful...
Vol. 113 • August 1986 • No. 14
