Cinema: A Season Of Flash And Greed

Two Christmas movies Tweak an '80s devil

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Tom, that handsome devil of a network reporter, might not know the difference between Jim Bakker's sex pawn and Jessica McClure. He sure doesn't know the difference between millions and billions in a Defense Department cost-overrun story he's working on. But he knows how to shed a calculated tear on-camera during a human-interest interview. In one sense, Tom is the reverse of Bud Fox: he isn't bright, but he's smart -- smart enough to use his looks and his nice, helpful, attractive attitude to get intelligent people to push him toward stardom, so that they connive in the erosion of their ideals. He is the ultimate salesman and, Brooks suggests, the ultimate news product.

And he gets all the great women. One, anyway: Jane Craig, daredevil news producer. Jane (Holly Hunter) is so focused that even her sobbing fits are controlled; she performs them each morning like aerobics. She is properly repelled by Tom, and improperly attracted to him. Improperly, because she has a perfect pal -- not a soul mate exactly, but a brain mate -- in Aaron Altman (Albert Brooks), a warm, supercompetent, underappreciated reporter, the Jimmy Olsen of Mensa. Aaron can spit out pertinent facts about Gaddafi, he can get drunk and sing along in flawless French to a Francis Cabrel tune, he can love Jane to pristine pieces, all to no avail. Poor Aaron. He lacks what this judicious, irresistible romantic comedy is about: the fatal attraction of star quality.

All the performers are tops, from Jack Nicholson as the sour, imposing anchorman who strides through a newsroom decimated by layoffs muttering, "and all because they couldn't program Wednesday nights," to the three principals. Actor-Auteur Albert Brooks (who cast Jim Brooks -- no relation -- in his own second film, Modern Romance) is the all-time appealing schlemiel, notably in a laugh-nightmare when he anchors the network news and sweats his career down the tubes. (Says one appalled technician: "This is more than Nixon ever sweated.") Hurt is neat too, never standing safely outside his character, always allowing Tom to find the humor in his too-rapid success, locating a dimness behind his eyes when Tom is asked a tough question -- and for Tom, poor soulless sensation-to-be, all questions are tough ones. As for Hunter, she graduates with honors from off-Broadway (The Miss Firecracker Contest) and off-Hollywood (Raising Arizona) to fill the center of this demanding movie with cracker charm and elfin steel. Hail, Holly: daredevil actress.

As the premiere sitcom Svengali, Jim Brooks knows how to create characters an audience can fall in love with. But on a TV series, relationships are never resolved; they are just continued next week. So Brooks concludes Broadcast News with a sitcom ellipsis, not a movie exclamation point. The movie ends, like the '80s perhaps, in resignation and anticlimax. Maybe no one believes in happy endings anymore, or even in endings. Maybe, after Bakker and Hart and Iranamuck, people are too cynical to care who gets the girl. But it is good to know that craftsmen like Brooks can create compelling, pertinent folks like Jane, Aaron and Tom. Can we hope that they will spin off into their own high sitcom? That would give us something, at least, to look forward to in the '90s.

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