MICHAEL
A film review by Andrew Hicks
Copyright 1997 Andrew Hicks / Fatboy Productions
(1996) ** (out of four)
Hopefully, MICHAEL will be the last nail in the angel- obsession coffin. In the last couple years we've been overrun with the angel theme in the media. "Touched By an Angel," THE PREACHER'S WIFE, there was even a TV special where incidences of angels helping people in dangerous situations were re-enacted by bad actors. I'm still wondering why they didn't just get William Shatner to do voiceovers and call it "Rescue 777."
The religious folk have been talking about how wonderful this angel revival is, apparently realizing that there's almost zero correlation between movie angels and Biblical angels. Nowhere is this polarization more concrete than in Nora Ephron's MICHAEL, in which the title character, who the Bible says threw Satan out of heaven, smokes, drinks, eats like a pig and beds down with multiple women. This kind of behavior isn't justified in any Bible not written by Anton LeVay, but I guess John Travolta doesn't care because it's not his religion to begin with. If he had to play a boozing, promiscuous L. Ron Hubbard, he'd probably feel differently.
Travolta, of course, plays Michael, a slovenly New Age angel who quotes not John and Paul, the disciples, but John and Paul, the Beatles, with a love-is-all-you-need message. His mission on Earth involves match-making tabloid writers William Hurt and Andie MacDowell, who get a letter from an old women in Iowa (Jean "Edith Bunker" Stapleton) claiming she has an angel living in her house. Hurt, MacDowell, Robert Pastorelli and his cute dog cross several states to get the story, which they figure will probably win them the tabloid equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize.
Michael's first appearance in the movie sets the tone for everything that follows. He wanders down the stairs, wearing nothing but a pair of boxers, his giant dirty wings flapping. Cigarette in mouth, he scratches himself, grabs a beer from the refrigerator and heads back upstairs. Travolta said in one of his myriad television interviews promoting MICHAEL that people who don't buy the entrance probably won't buy the rest of the movie. He was right; I didn't buy either.
It's not just the fact that this is one of God's right-hand men having premarital sex with Teri Garr, it's also never clear why Michael would think the way he does. These movie angels live in a perfect heaven with the Creator of the universe Himself, but their main goal throughout eternity is to find ways to get back to Earth. With Denzel Washington's character in THE PREACHER'S WIFE, it made more sense because he was once a human. Michael's an archangel, though; he's never lived down here and therefore would have no reason to continually want to leave heaven to experience the pleasures of a flawed earth.
One more thing I didn't buy -- this movie assumes the Bible is true. Michael says he wrote Psalm 85 and when Stapleton quotes from Revelation, he verifies it. But is this the same Bible that makes it perfectly clear that God hates sin? Fornication, drunkenness, gluttony, those are pillar sins. That God would let this winged angel come down from heaven every hundred years or so to do this stuff doesn't seem plausible.
We're probably not supposed to think about the movie's theology, though. We're just supposed to sit back and let MICHAEL entertain us. Unfortunately, everything about the movie is just as muddled as its characterization of angels. The plot is thin and predictable. The tabloid writers drive Michael back to Chicago and, along the way, he does all sorts of human things and helps Hurt and MacDowell fall in love. There aren't very many laughs and the drama is forced and laughable.
Travolta and everyone else do a decent job acting, but the fault here lies in the script. This movie was probably sold to the studio on the basis of, "Hey, we've got John Travolta as an angel in a romantic comedy that's going to open on Christmas Day." None of the executives had to read the script to realize the very concept would make money, but they should have realized Ephron's mix of dark themes and storybook romance would make for a bizarre combination. MICHAEL could have used a little divine intervention.
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