Broadcast News Isn't Quite The Sum of Its Entertaining Parts

You ever finish watching a beloved movie for the first time and suddenly find yourself stuck with the feeling of recognizing you enjoyed it but also wished you had liked it more? I encountered such a sensation after finishing Broadcast News for the first time, a classic James L. Brooks romantic-comedy from 1987 that numerous people claim to be the apex of Brooks' entire career. It's certainly leagues ahead of his 2010 dud How Do You Know and a highly charming feature overall with some exceptional performances, but I walked away from Broadcast News feeling satisfied but not truly enamored with what I had just seen.


Broadcast News is only thirty years old, but it takes place in a world of television news reporting that already seems completely alien to the modern-day way we get our news as we watch reporters and producers scramble to get news pieces ready for the nightly news. Two people who break their backs for any story that comes their way is writer Aaron Altman (Albert Brooks) and producer Jane Craig (Holly Hunter), both of whom have their entire lives shifted when their news station hires Tom Grunick (William Hurt) to be their newest anchorman. Gruncik soon finds himself excelling at his job and in a blossoming romance with Jane Craig, much to the chagrin of Altman who has harbored feelings for Craig.

The stage is set for a love triangle that dominates the plot and offers up numerous chances for the three main performers to excel. If nothing else, Broadcast News is an impeccably cast production, from William Hurt as the perfectly perfect anchorman to Holly Hunter as an intricately detailed producer to Joan Cusack as a frantic producer (God, isn't Cusack just the best?) to Albert Brooks as a neurotic writer. These four actors take their roles and just run with them, resulting in a lot of memorable comedy (Brooks can make everyday paranoia hilarious like nobody else's business) and some compelling moments of character-based drama, with Hunter and Brooks especially doing strong work in depicting their characters confronting their feelings for one another late into the story.

While the performances are excellent, the writing from James L. Brooks has a tendency to tip over into the realm of being merely serviceable. Now, the script does have its noteworthy qualities, no question about it, Brooks can write back-and-forth banter extremely well, especially the exchanges between the characters of Altman and Craig, while the character of Jane Craig is particularly well-realized among the films cast. However, there were various points in the story that I found myself wishing the plot and characters didn't tend to take such expected turns, the Craig and Grunick romance especially feels too much on the formulaic side to ever get emotionally invested in. The adequate but not exceptional nature of the films most predictable story beats gets reinforced by the fact that Broadcast News tends to find creative success the times that it does go down more unexpected plot detours (like a nicely mature ending).

Oh, and Bill Conti's score tends to fall on the intrusive side of things, particularly in emotional sequences that get so covered in Conti's treacly orchestral music that I wished it would just go away so that I could take in the power of these performances. Luckily for Broadcast News, the movie as a whole is very much a character-driven romantic-comedy, thus allowing those aforementioned performances to carry the bulk of the proceedings and drive up the overall quality of the motion picture as a whole. Relying so heavily on its three leads allows Broadcast News to be an entertaining movie, even if it is one I wish I could have gotten more out of then I actually did.