Word: ephron
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Much the same could be said of Nora Ephron's movie. It has a good premise: down-on-his-luck movie actor Jack Wyatt (Will Ferrell) agrees to do a remake of the old TV show (1964-72) but casts an unknown to play Samantha so he, playing her husband Darrin, can dominate the program. The role goes to Isabel Bigelow (Kidman), who really is a witch, although she's trying to break the habit. But you can't make a laff riot out of what is essentially a straight man's role, and Jack bombs. Even the family...
...something misses here. Maybe funny witches are just too retro. Maybe the lack of chemistry between Kidman and Ferrell has something to do with it. Ferrell, in particular, doesn't seem to want to be as edgy--all right, insanely self-involved--as he might be. And, it seems, Ephron (who co-wrote the script with her sister Delia) also wants everyone to make nice. Whatever air the picture has goes whooshing out of it when the stars do a romantic dance. It's reminiscent of Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds in a similar setting in Singin' in the Rain...
...wasn't my intention for him to do it as a film," recalls Nora Ephron, 44. "I just wanted him to read it." But Director Mike Nichols, 53, thought Heartburn, Ephron's best-selling novel that resembles the breakup of her marriage to Watergate Journalist Carl Bernstein, 41, would make a good movie, and the rest, as they say, is history, or maybe her-story. Now filming in New York City, Heartburn stars Meryl Streep, 35, as the jilted cookbook writer, and Jack Nicholson, 48, as the man who gives her marital indigestion. Nicholson is replacing Mandy Patinkin...
...content. ABC's Pedowitz insists that creative approval remains with the network, even in the case of a plot line involving the teenage daughter's dilemma over whether to have an abortion, an issue more sensitive than sponsors might be comfortable with. "Time will tell," says media consultant Erwin Ephron. "But what this new MindShare model underscores is that people are willing to do things they haven't been willing to do in the past." It may be a matter of survival...
...find a cinematic fluidity using sliding walls to cut between scenes, while film clips of happy couples reminiscing (a successful device in the original) are often projected on a screen in front of the set. It's a good try, but since playwright Marcy Kahan uses much of Ephron's screenplay verbatim there are too many rapid-fire scenes. Every setting change, however brief, disrupts the momentum, and the effect is wearying. The cinematic production simply emphasizes Kahan's failure to find a way of making this work in the theater. And it's not just the sets that disappoint...