I'LL DO ANYTHING
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1994 Scott Renshaw
Starring: Nick Nolte, Albert Brooks, Whittni Wright, Joely Richardson, Julie Kavner, Tracey Ullman. Screenplay/Director: James L. Brooks.
I wish I hadn't known so much about I'LL DO ANYTHING. I wish I hadn't known that it was written as a musical, and that the songs had been edited out after disastrous test screenings. I wish I hadn't found myself trying to guess where the songs would have gone, or wondering what might have been different. Then maybe, just maybe, I would have enjoyed it even more than I did. As aware as I was of its bumps, I was still mostly delighted by I'LL DO ANYTHING, and the reason why can be summed up in two words: Whittni Wright.
I'LL DO ANYTHING stars Nick Nolte as Matt Hobbs, a talented but struggling actor who never seems to have the "it" anyone is looking for. At a particularly down time in his career, he finds himself with an added responsibility: his 6-year-old daughter Jeannie (Whittni Wright), taken away from his ex-wife (Tracey Ullman) when she is sent to prison. Juggling Jeannie and his career becomes even trickier when he begins working for producer Burke Adler (Albert Brooks), and finds himself pushed for the lead in a remake of "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town" by a supportive development executive (Joely Richardson). Meanwhile, Jeannie is offered a part on a sit-com, and Adler works on a relationship with a pathologically honest audience researcher (Julie Kavner).
The fact is that I'LL DO ANYTHING shouldn't have worked at all. It's impossible not to play "Spot the Song Setup" (Nolte's number while he paces his apartment as Jeannie stays with a babysitter for the first time? Kavner's watching Brooks schmooze in a posh restaurant?), or to notice some particularly choppy editing. The Hollywood satire element never really hits stride, because it doesn't hit hard enough and because THE PLAYER already did it better. Ullman's character sports an appalling Georgia accent, and the six year time shifts don't allow for any rhyme or reason to her eventual, rather tenuous emotional state or why she spoils Jeannie so terribly. There are plenty of holes in I'LL DO ANYTHING, and a few more might have spelled disaster.
Consequently, I consider it fortunate that I fell in love with Whittni Wright the moment she appeared on screen. Wright is a magnificent Jeannie, reducing Matt to a whimper of "I have absolutely no idea what to do when she throws a spectacular temper tantrum on a plane. Unlike so many young performers, she never struck me as overly precious or self-aware, just winningly adorable. Stripped of its angle as a big industry send-up, I'LL DO ANYTHING becomes a story of people trying to get their priorities straight in a business where every instinct tells you to sell out those priorities, and Matt's relationship with Jeannie becomes the focal point of that struggle. As many times as "parent learns responsibility" stories have been done, I was still completely charmed by this one. Nolte and Wright are great together, and I found myself smiling almost every minute they were on screen together.
As he has done in his previous films, TERMS OF ENDEARMENT and BROADCAST NEWS, James L. Brooks fills the screen with quirky characters and clever dialogue. Joely Richardson is lovely and appealing as Cathy, the development exec who wants to take a stand but can't quite work up the nerve, and she uses her splayed-leg sitting position to give Cathy an aura of perpetual insecurity. Albert Brooks is good but underused as the cocky big-budget producer, and Julie Kavner gets off some of the best lines as the voice of honesty. It's too bad the relationships between those characters are generally so sketchy, gutted of some of their emotion byt the removal of the production numbers. Still, the one relationship that really mattered worked so well that I was tremendously forgiving. I'LL DO ANYTHING may not be the smoothest of rides, but Nolte and Wright did such a fine job of winning my heart that I was more than willing to take that ride with them.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 removed songs: 7.
-- Scott Renshaw Stanford University Office of the General Counsel
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