The temptation to overpraise Broadcast News is great, but it mustn’t lead us into the opposite temptation of underpraising it. I went expecting the worst, for James L. Brooks, who wrote and directed, was similarly responsible for the odious Terms of Endearment. Almost as if in reaction to the consummate speciousness of that movie, Brooks here devises a panegyric to honesty, as confused as it is fanatical, that does the film more harm than good. Luckily, there is enough else to save Broadcast News from drowning in its self-righteousness.
The central figure is Jane Craig, a producer of network news in Washington, a career woman and job-absorbed perfectionist, not so much sexually liberated as liberated from sex. Her work consumes her; yet sometimes she disconnects the phone to let her emotions—or frustrations—burst out as a quivering mixture of laughter and tears. The rest of the time, Jane is relentless in her pursuit of as much truth as a superficial and gimmicky medium allows; and though she thinks she despises the frills, she secretly enjoys even them. Like her laughter and tears, Jane is a mixed bag, and the more real for it.
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