Review of The Paper (1994) by Ross M — 11 Jan 2009

A nice, often claustrophobic newspaper comedy drama. The drama, which is more present here, is well played out with some realistic scenes. The comedy comes in the form of hilarious lines (mostly spoken by Duvall's grumpy character) and situations.

It draws influence heavily from the newspaper classic All The Presidents Men but never manages to be as good, but ATPM is an extremly hard act to follow. The weaving in and out of the cramped corridoors show an obvious resemblence to ATPM especially.

As far as the acting is concerned, all portray there character as if they are them and therfore you can become attached to the characters. Michael Keaton is amazing and I love one of his very angry telephone hang ups he makes which has to be one of the most hilarious, as well as well written, stand out scenes of the film.

Glenn Close is also brilliant in her role but is no where near as good as Alex Forrest in Fatal ATrraction. I don't think any of her performances can top that.

Duvall, Quaid and others were also good, helping to form an almost enselmble cast. Almsot meaningthat some characters do seem to be in the film more regularily than others.

One of the highlights of the film was the short but memorable cameo from Jason Robards, one of my all time favourite actors who oddly, played the role of editor Ben Bradlee in ATPM too. But I guess that is the reason why he was cast.

Amongst the stand out scenes there are some much less interesting ones, which could have been done away with. As a result, the film feels slightly dragged out, but that is my only complaint and is not enough of a reason to not see this witty, emotional film.