James L. Brooks makes a funny, perceptive romance about people who would rather discuss work than themselves. It gets too forgiving of their faults, but Holly Hunter, William Hurt and Albert Brooks make them worth caring about.
Broadcast News is a funny, observant romantic comedy whose people have made work their main excuse for neglecting themselves. James L. Brooks writes and directs with enough affection to make their company pleasurable, even when their behaviour is not. We recommend it warmly, with a reservation about the gentle treatment these colleagues sometimes receive. The Washington television news bureau matters because a professional disagreement can become personal before anybody has admitted there is a personal problem.
Holly Hunter’s Jane Craig is the reason that mixture works. Her anxiety as a producer gives the workplace scenes urgency, but Hunter also makes it tiring to be around someone for whom the job is always so important. She does not ask us to mistake that intensity for an uncomplicated virtue. She makes dedication look exhausting, particularly when Jane cannot seem to put any distance between herself and the work.
William Hurt’s Tom Grunick and Albert Brooks’s Aaron Altman give her two different kinds of company, and neither performance settles for filling a corner of the triangle. Hurt makes it possible to like Tom without having to agree with him. Albert Brooks gives Aaron’s wit an edge that makes him funny without making him automatically right. We laughed at the newsroom wisecracks, then felt uncomfortable about how readily we had enjoyed their malice. The script allows a clever line to hurt somebody, rather than treating every joke as harmless.
Michael Ballhaus’s cinematography keeps our interest in the faces, which is sensible in a film where so much depends on how a remark is received. Charles Rosen’s production design makes the bureau convincing as the centre of these people’s lives. Neither contribution makes the workplace feel incidental to the romance. The professional setting gives the actors reasons to be near each other, judge each other and avoid saying what is bothering them.
Richard Marks’s editing is especially effective at keeping the newsroom exchanges brisk without losing their personal sting. The pace is less assured when the film gives its people more time to consider their feelings, and at 133 minutes there is room for a firmer cut. Bill Conti’s score is an amiable companion to the romance, although its encouragement towards tenderness can feel unnecessary. Brooks has already given his actors enough to make us care; the music need not insist.
Our main reservation is that Brooks forgives too much. He understands the back-stabbing and the temptation to treat television news as entertainment, then lets the romance take some of the discomfort away. Still, compared with a romantic comedy in which work is merely an obstacle to finding the right person, this has a welcome interest in why people enjoy their jobs. Attraction has to compete with the pleasure of being useful, being admired and being right.
There is no requirement to like all three people equally, and the film is better company if we resist picking a favourite too quickly. Hunter, Hurt and Albert Brooks keep changing how much sympathy each deserves. Their self-absorption can be funny and painful within the same exchange. Watch it with someone prepared to disagree about all three of them.
