Screen:
O'Brien, Tom
SCREEN TWO SNORTS 'MILAGRO' & 'CHANNELS' The Milagro Beanfield War marks Robert Red-ford's return to directing; it is his first film since the far superior Ordinary People (1981). Hopes were high...
...Redford also turns from Hollywood formulas by making the hero the community of Milagro, and not the owner of the beanfield (Chick Vennera), who begins a protest by diverting water from an irrigation canal feeding the development project...
...Other recent, well-intentioned political films (Cry Freedom, End of the Line, Walker), have the same problem...
...Too many happy endings leave Milagro without focus and without bite...
...The Xerox fits like a clone...
...The problem...
...Enlisted by Braga to defend Vennera, he screams at her, "Don't you know the sixties are over...
...Who among them acknowledges conflict of interest...
...Señor Pig adds spunk and local flavor...
...The result...
...Many myths are grounded in truth...
...Cable TV companies are putting up much of the money for these marginal productions and as part of their contracts require release in several theaters or in several cities...
...it helps to think...
...He has also dedicated time and energy to supporting the ecology movement, a concern that forms the backbone of Milagro...
...He has weakened the screenplay with unexpected whimsy, mock-heroic jesting, cartoon satire of the bad guys, and stabs at light surrealism (the ghost of Vennera's father drops by to chat with the village ancient, played by the veteran Mexican actor Carlos Ri-quelme...
...The title tells all: what's new here is "broadcast news...
...Give Switching Channels about two months...
...The play, too, is so often restaged that it is hard to fault the producers of Switching Channels for trying to cash in on the cockamamy plot...
...His Girl Friday itself was based on the MacArthur-Hecht stage classic, Front Page, also made into a film (with a Lemmon-Matthau team-up) in 1960...
...The new screenplay doesn't have the MacArthur-Hecht-Hawks's snap and crackle, nor do the actors have sufficient skill in repartee to raise the whole to zany anarchy...
...Such values are not movingly, deeply, or richly portrayed...
...But what have they given us that's new...
...Reynolds evokes our memory of Cary Grant only to his own discredit...
...Like colorization, such a remake brings on nostalgia for the original...
...The basic change involves the actors less than acting styles and writing...
...The ancients, we know, were credulous...
...Several weeks ago this column (February 26), noted that over 500 films were released in 1987...
...Channels, like Broadcast News, is limited...
...The final result: cable companies get products into their networks sooner...
...Who can keep up with the titles of most of these...
...In this remake, Burt Reynolds, Kathleen Turner, and Christopher Reeve redo the roles-as a news editor, his ex-wife and reporter, and a businessman trying to lure the lady away...
...The immediate result: films are released to too wide a market, fail to fill the theaters, and are withdrawn by distributors, even more rapidly than in the past...
...Commitment brings renewal of his values and faith in justice...
...This represented a 20 percent increase over 1986...
...Alas, how can a biweekly column keep ahead of the death rate...
...And surprise...
...Of course, they are preferable to Rambo clones and assembly-line thrillers (Little Nikita, Off Limits, D.O.A...
...Films have even less time than books to "sit on the shelves" and wait for an audience to find them...
...The acting adds little...
...Redford celebrates community by shaping his medium to his message...
...In Channels, Turner saves a man wrongly condemned to death...
...Those who lament our lost literacy can cite the example of such remakes not just for poor language but for verbal sloth...
...Why care for characters in a film whose style so frequently telegraphs that they have, really, nothing to worry about...
...Pace Red-ford, it's not enough to care...
...One scene announces Redford's intent...
...But Redford's diffuse focus could only work if the rest of the film were emotionally coherent...
...But it reappears twice too often-once for the inevitable shooting and once for an improbable cure...
...Hopes were high for Milagro, because he has backed a number of small, quality independent films (El None, Desert Bloom) through his Sundance Film Institute in Colorado...
...The weak may inherit the earth, but never so cloyingly...
...The deluge continues: as of March, releases for 1988 were another 20 percent ahead of 1987...
...Milagro declares that not caring is passe...
...A nice liberal movie...
...But it's all too easy for writers to invent this particular one, all too convenient for media folks to spread it...
...The laughs aren't there...
...The sentimental liberalism, the wishful thinking, and propagandis-tic superficiality of these films make one fear, alas, that the worst aspects of the sixties aren't dead...
...But a note on the proliferation is in order...
...The film has one plus, its cartoon image of the media...
...Superficial contemporaneity and hi-tech...
...Turner plays her role well, but is perhaps too warm and wide a face-or too mellow an actress- to convince us she is a feisty go-getter...
...A Xerox machine stands as the perfect symfor Switching Channels, replacing the roll-up desk as the key stage device of His Girl Friday, Howard Hawks' s 1940 comic gem with Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, and Ralph Bellamy...
...Both films satirize the press, but celebrate its public role...
...News implies that the faults of TV journalism derive from limited air time and too-handsome anchors (as if twenty-four-hour CNN-type news stations with dour-faced grumps assure "quality...
...Here, TV newsmen run around rudely, mindlessly, while the few remaining print reporters are corrupt fools despite their pretensions to greater integrity...
...But he agrees to take the case...
...At first, it is a naughty, snorty variant on the lovable pet...
...Like Jessica Lange and Sissy Spacek, Redford has used his name and money to improve the movie-making system...
...Redford may have been trying for a fantastic tale a la Marquez, but Milagro winds up merely mawkish...
...And many non-actors appear as the townspeople of Milagro...
...Milagro depicts the efforts of a group of Hispanic New Mexicans to resist large scale condo-cum-golf course development of their ancestral valley...
...Indeed, the cast includes familiar faces, but no superstar diverts attention from the group...
...Veteran actor John Heard plays an activist lawyer, burned out by too many lost cases...
...Yuppie jokes are aimed at Reeve, but he flattens them by personifying too aptly the banality of his character...
...Mac Arthur and Hecht may be forgiven their subscription to the myth that rascally reporters serve the public by saving us from rascally politicians (here, a corrupt mayor...
...Given the press's control of real discussion about the press, anything that breeds skepticism of the self-appointed arbiters of our national life deserves attention...
...Bulging eyes and awkward arm-waving gestures can't replace the antic grace, zest for mischief, and the rapid-fire Cockney mouth ("Hildy, Hildy, Hildy," he would plead with sweet mock-reason to Rosalind Russell) that fired Grant at his best...
...Although Braga dominates many scenes with one of the simplest but most alluring costumes in recent movies, Redford educes some good ensemble acting...
...This giant porker roves around town, sometimes looking for affection, sometimes looking for trouble...
...To cast an ethnic group as heroes (led by Brazilian actress Sonia Braga and Puerto Rican actor/director Rueben Blades) still requires some courage, even with the growing number of mainstream movies directed to Hispanic audiences (La Bamba) or Hispanic problems (the new anti-SAT school film Stand and Deliver...
...TOM O'BRIEN...
...Take Milagro's pig, for example...
...The problem isn't derivativeness...
...Just what do you think brought us the backlash kids, Nixon and Reagan...
...Or perhaps to care enough to think...
Vol. 115 • April 1988 • No. 8
