MICHAEL
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1996 Scott Renshaw
(New Line) Starring: John Travolta, Andie MacDowell, William Hurt, Bob Hoskins, Robert Pastorelli. Screenplay: Pete Dexter & Jim Quinlan and Nora Ephron and Delia Ephron. Producers: Sean Daniel, James Jacks. Director: Nora Ephron. MPAA Rating: PG (profanity, adult themes) Running Time: 100 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
Nora Ephron still has a lot to learn about making movies. Yes, she has shown that she has her finger on what audiences want to see in a romantic comedy, both as a writer (WHEN HARRY MET SALLY...) and as a director (SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE), but when it comes to her sense of narrative as a film-maker, she has proven to be on a downward learning curve. SLEEPLESS coasted on the charm of its stars and a painstakingly manufactured sense of whimsy; MIXED NUTS collapsed into a chaotic holiday mess. In MICHAEL, Ephron attempts to meld genial romantic comedy with irreverent fantasy, and the result is one of the most mis-guided high-concept films to come out of Hollywood in years.
William Hurt stars as Frank Quinlan, a former investigative reporter now writing for a Chicago-based supermarket tabloid. Frank has had trouble proving to his editor (Bob Hoskins) that he understands what the tabloid audience wants, but a letter arrives for Frank which may save his job. A woman in Iowa named Pansy Milbank (Jean Stapleton) claims that an angel is living with her, and Frank heads out to investigate with his colleague Huey (Robert Pastorelli) and an "angel expert" named Dorothy Winters (Andie MacDowell). What they find is no ordinary, halo-wearing angel, however: it is the archangel Michael (John Travolta), an overweight chain-smoker with a very real set of wings. Michael agrees to be photographed for the paper, but only if they drive back to Chicago, and thus begins a very odd road trip with one of the heavenly host.
The story for MICHAEL is co-credited to Pete Dexter (PARIS TROUT, RUSH), which leads me to believe that it was a very different story in an earlier incarnation. An eccentric angel enjoying a final go-around on earth is an interesting concept, and John Travolta certainly appears to be having a great time with it. His early scenes are a riot -- a slovenly descent of the stairs, dragging wings behind his bloated bare chest, followed by a breakfast of alarmingly over-sugared Frosted Flakes -- but then he becomes strangely sedate, even when he gets into a barroom brawl. As an over-eager celestial rascal, Michael could have been an entertaining character to follow, but Ephron appears worried that a lusty angel might be too offensive. Even when he has a one-night stand with a waitress, Travolta maintains a smiling serenity rather than a bit of the devil.
Ephron and her sister Delia probably contributed the romantic plot to the mix, a plot which eventually subsumes Michael's story entirely. Hurt, playing yet another variation on his emotionally wounded ACCIDENTAL TOURIST persona, is the lost soul in need of redemption; MacDowell does a predictable turn as a sketchy dog trainer-cum-aspiring country singer. Michael's mission seems to be to bring these two uncertain people together, and the story ultimately is about their development. They are never nearly as interesting as Michael, though, and this budding romance usually acts as a distraction between the angel's unpredictable pranks. It is difficult to get wrapped up in the subtleties of a relationship while you're watching John Travolta lead a seductive dance to "Chain of Fools" or head-butt a bull into animatronic submission.
MICHAEL is unfocused and disappointing for nearly all of its running time, but it is in the final twenty minutes that it becomes absolutely insufferable. A sub-plot finds Pastorelli's Huey the owner of a dog with a popular column in the tabloid, and little Sparky ends up playing a depressingly significant role in the proceedings. When the dog's fate after a run-in with a truck becomes MICHAEL's major plot point, you know Ephron is willing to do absolutely anything to crank up the audience's sympathy. She stages a drawn-out death scene which is a complete cheat; she violates her own rules of angelic interaction with humanity to provide the happy ending. She doesn't give a single character a consistent personality (except Hoskins as the grouchy editor), and she makes indefensible choices in editing and shot selection which break up momentum and make two-thirds of the frame useless. In short, nearly every decision Nora Ephron makes leads you to the conclusion that she had no idea how to make MICHAEL a cohesive, coherent film. I think MICHAEL was supposed to be about someone who needed guidance. I'm fairly sure it was made _by_ someone who needed guidance.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 angels with dirty faces: 3.
Visit Scott Renshaw's MoviePage http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~srenshaw Subscribe to receive reviews directly via email See details on the MoviePage
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews