Word: roebuck
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...impersonate famous people, from Jackie O. to Roseanne, are pointless enough, but to re-create this TV-industry story for a mass audience seems the height of self-absorption. John Michael Higgins does a good job mimicking Letterman's cigar-chomping crankiness, but he's too energetic. Daniel Roebuck has the chin (with the help of prosthetics), but turns Leno into a simpering moron. Yet these characters, at least, will be recognizable to viewers. The rest of The Late Shift is a parade of TV executives known to few in the audience, but all scrupulously identified onscreen as if this...
...Zoglin. "The backstage network shenanigans have been deftly digested, and the movie gives a good picture, in broad strokes, of how the TV business runs: badly, most of the time. John Michael Higgins does a good job mimicking Letterman's cigar-chomping crankiness, but he's too energetic. Daniel Roebuck has the chin (with the help of prosthetics), but turns Leno into a simpering moron." But the fatal flaw of "The Late Shift" is that its recreation of an television insider story seems the height of self-absorption. "'The Late Shift' is a parade of TV executives known...
...disgruntled employee is Donald Sullivan, known to the rest of the town as Sully. His boss is Carl Roebuck, played by Bruce Willis. Since mangling his knee on the job, Sully insists that he is owed compensation. His one legged lawyer, Wirf, portrayed marvelously by Gene Saks, can't get the local judge to agree. Unfortunately for Sully, his lawyer isn't on a hot streak. He can't even predict the outcome of a case on "The People's Court." Sully has a better chance of collecting money on the Trifecta ticket--a longshot in horseracing--that he plays...
...Sully's troubles are innumerable, and, realistically speaking, they ought to make him at least contemplate the possibility of defeat. He has banged up his knee working for exploitative Carl Roebuck (Bruce Willis in another of his astonishingly good character jobs), and his amiable, incompetent lawyer (Gene Saks) can't get him compensation. Sully is long since estranged from his wife, and his relationship with his college-professor son (Dylan Walsh), who has career and marital problems of his own, is difficult. Sully rents a room from a tolerant, spirited old lady (the late Jessica Tandy) who is beginning...
None of this is permitted to get Sully down -- not for long, anyway. He may occasionally rage at his narrowing circumstances, but mostly he confronts them with a cheeky joke. Or a boyish prank: he and Roebuck keep stealing a snowblower back and forth. Or some comically self-destructive behavior -- he finally punches out that cop and lands briefly in jail -- that doesn't do him as much harm as it would if this were real life instead of a movie determined to be cheerful at any cost...