James L. Brooks's bow to popular opinion. His movie started out as a musical, and went barreling ahead as one, until it was tried out in front of preview audiences. Their resistance to it was such that all the musical numbers got thrown out, except for the one of the six-year-old moppet (Whittni Wright: with that spelling, how can she miss?) singing along with her cassette player. The fact that the movie, or what is left of it, is in part a satire on the craven ways of Hollywood, and includes among its characters a test-screening pollster and a jittery movie producer enslaved to the pollster's data, only makes matters worse. The irony is thick enough to be cut with a chain saw. There exists, of course, the strong possibility that in its musical form the movie was just not very good. But at least it was Brooks's own personal original creative vision: it was the movie he wanted to make. What we are left with now -- despite flashes of sophistication and an unfailingly delightful performance by Albert Brooks as the movie producer -- is still not very good, and not even so much his. A failure, and an unadventurous, unambitious, unhonorable failure to boot. Nick Nolte, Julie Kavner, Joely Richardson, Tracey Ullman. (1994) — Duncan Shepherd
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