I LOVE TROUBLE: BLU-RAY (TOUCHSTONE/HOLLYWOOD/CARAVAN, 1994) BUENA VISTA HOME VIDEO
In the 1930’s and 40’s the coupling of big names stars became a popular
marketing ploy in Hollywood: finding the perfect pair, as it were, and
re-marketing them in serialized or similarly themed movie franchises: Tracy and
Hepburn, Greer Garson and Walter Pigeon, Gable and Crawford, and so on. The
endurance of such winning teams was proof positive to the movie moguls, that
when it came to popular entertainments, the best blend was richly achieved by
an audience’s familiarity with these iconic couples. Charles Shyer’s spookily lit
and deftly executed romantic comedy, I Love Trouble (1994) draws its inspiration
and parallel from another great screen team: William Powell and Myrna Loy. In
the 1930’s and 40’s Powell and Loy were America’s great marrieds, but mostly renowned
as Nick and Nora Charles – dapper dilettantes on a lark and a spree; he, the
debonair and marginally accomplished sleuth; she, the wickedly satirical
appendage who had some of the best one-liners in their ‘Thin Man’
franchise. In 1939’s Another Thin Man, as example, when asked on the
telephone how their honeymoon vacation went, Loy quaintly replies, “It was
wonderful. Nick was sober in Kansas City!” Flash forward to I Love
Trouble and another winning combo…well, at least on paper. By 1994, Charles
Shyer and Nancy Meyers had been scripting urbane and sophisticated comedy gems
for more than a decade. Their penchant
for razor-sharp, shoot-from-the-hip dialogue augmented such slickly packaged
entertainments as Private Benjamin (1980), Irreconcilable Differences,
and, Protocol (both released in 1984), and the superb remakes of Father
of the Bride (1991 – 1995). I Love Trouble’s incubation and critical
reception would hardly be as rewarding. For one thing, co-stars Julia Roberts
and Nick Nolte did not get on – she, describing him as ‘disgusting’, while he
merely referred to her as ‘not a nice person’. For another, at the time of its
production Shyers and Meyers’ professional alliance had morphed into an unhappy
marriage, the couple eventually divorcing in 1999.
And then there were the run-ins with Touchstone. Disney’s adult
picture-making offshoot wanted all of their movies to conform to a run time well
below the 2-hr. standard. But Shyers and Meyers had concocted a 2-hr. plus
comedy/thriller. Unable to win this creative debate, trims to the original
screenplay would have to be made – also, alas, major edits to pare down the
actual footage shot – resulting in a somewhat truncated whodunit that still
worked but was decidedly NOT the movie Shyers had intended to make. I Love Trouble is very much a send up
to the ‘Thin Man’ stylish and farce-laden detective stories from the
late 1930’s; a sort of pre-marital Nick and Nora Charles romantic thriller,
updated to accommodate the social mores of the 1990’s (no separate beds here,
although, interestingly, Shyer/Meyers have the couple marry – on the fly in
Atlantic City, but hey…it’s still legal… before loveless copulation can take
place). I Love Trouble also plays to the strengths of its two costars:
Nick Nolte, looking craggy and handsome, and at his arrogant best, with Julia
Roberts at her most seductively charming and wittily playful. Despite their off-screen
animosity, there is a genuine chemistry at work between these two on the
screen, to hark all the way back to the infectious Tracy/Hepburn ‘battle of the
sexes’ rom/com friction.
Despite such virtues, at the time of its release, critics didn’t think
much of I Love Trouble. And, on a budget of $45 million, I Love
Trouble’s return of $61,947,267 hardly made it a blockbuster. Actually, in
the U.S., the picture failed to recoup its initial outlay. Still, I can recall
sitting in the theater back in 1994 and being held captive by its intricately
woven plot, clever dialogue and the caustic, clicking chemistry between Nolte
and Roberts, as his established newspaper columnist, Peter Brackett hits on cub
reporter, Sabrina Peterson (Roberts) only to be cruelly shot down for his
efforts by this gal who only ‘thinks’ she is holding all the cards in their
competitive race against time – and each other. “Look,” Peterson
pointedly explains, “I know every cub reporter in a skirt would probably go
gaga over the great Peter Brackett but let me set you straight on a point. You
have zero chance of scoring here. Trust me. Move on!” to which Nolte’s
confident bon vivant merely reclines, rather than recoiling, adding “Where’d
you say you were from…Bitch-ville?” I
Love Trouble’s saving grace remains this infectious – if mildly toxic –
screen chemistry; Nolte, playing up a decade’s worth of solid work in the movies
and Roberts’ still feeling her oats as an actress, after the groundswell of
mega-popularity foisted upon her by the success of Pretty Woman
(1990).
To some extent, the expectations for I Love Trouble, to produce
another winning pair like Roberts and Pretty Woman’s costar, Richard
Gere, seems to have held the movie back – this, plus Touchstone’s totally
lackluster press and promotion, unceremoniously dumping I Love Trouble
as a mid-summer release without any fanfare. To be pointedly clear, the central
plot – that of a mysterious train derailment meant to cover up a far darker
crime, political espionage, and the concealment of a potentially harmful
chemical in the pasteurization of milk, is just a shay this side of kooky,
veering into wholly unbelievable territory. But actually, those expecting a
sensational thriller are missing the point. Because I Love Trouble is,
first and foremost, a romantic screwball – the silly sleuthing its focus. And,
at least in hindsight, I Love Trouble appears to be the last of its
kind; Meyers/Shyer’s screenplay, unsuccessfully to have resurrected the screwball
from its dormancy. While the Brackett/Peterson love affair takes center stage,
it is further complicated by the fact each is vying for the same scoop on a
murder mystery with more twists and turns than an amusement park dark ride. Given
the disparate directions tugging at our interests, the picture is cleverly
ambitious and mostly engaging; the first act, effortlessly spent on the sublime
competition between Nolte’s arrogant womanizer and Roberts’ deliciously rigid
girl-makes-good; each, swatting insults and attempting to outdo the other. At
one point, Brackett deliberately drops a hint of a clandestine meeting with the
potential next link in the chain of discovery, sending Peterson on a ‘wild
goose chase’ – literally: Peterson’s car stopped along a dirt country road by a
gaggle of white-feathered fowl. Brackett also sends Peterson a feisty little
bulldog to celebrate her scooping him out of his byline; the mutt (she later
claims to have nicknamed after its previous owner as ‘Little Dick’)
promptly urinating on a copy of her article. All of this light revenge is
sweetly played out; mildly endearing and drawing the couple into each other’s
space until, at last, they agree to a truce to unravel the mystery and thus,
discover there might be more between them than just the printed word.
I Love Trouble immensely benefits from David Newman’s bombastic
underscore; truly capturing the flavor of this passionate rivalry, but with a
nostalgic nod to such pluperfect examples in the sub-genre as His Girl
Friday (1940) and Woman of the Year (1942). Even better is John
Lindley’s moody cinematography. Like the best of its ilk, I Love Trouble
begins bright and breezy with an unassuming train trip juxtaposed next to an ever
so slightly more ominous country funeral. The tone dims, then grows darker as
Lindley’s camerawork moves out of the natural light of day and into the
half-lit recesses of lonely streets, and eerie, abandoned movie palace, and finally,
the uber-moderne interiors of an experimental laboratory after hours, the monolithic
corporate entity – Chess Chemical – serving as the penultimate setting for the climax
in Shyer/Meyers’ highly-inventive jigsaw puzzle. Throughout, Dean Tavoularis’ production
design captures an essential looming dread. Even the claustrophobic – if homey offices of
rival Chicago newspapers, The Globe and The Chronicle take on an unsettling
characteristic as Petterson uses her down time wisely, following up on unlikely
leads inside the dimly lit and otherwise decamped newsroom. Rather ingeniously,
most of I Love Trouble occurs at night, Shyers somehow managing to
spread his action across a series of often steamy and/or rain-soaked nights, utilizing
the hours from dusk till dawn without every actually making us aware he has
virtually cut out the standard 8-hours of daylight in a 24 hr. span. As such,
the picture takes on a very film noir characteristic; Chicago’s neon-lit
streets, and swank ballrooms gradually giving way to low-rent neighborhoods and
back alleys where danger – and a few good frights - perpetually lurk.
I Love Trouble crystalizes the duality in this light and shadow from
its main title sequence onward. We see two children (Hallie Meyers-Shyer and Boone
David Cates) witness the passing funeral cortege, carrying retired scientist,
Darryl Beekman, who died in a tragic house fire, to his final resting place. This
moment is interrupted by inserts of Darryl Beekman Jr. (Clark Gregg), forlorn
as he stands over his father’s casket, then hurriedly packing a briefcase with
some microfilm cleverly concealed in an ordinary writing pen, alongside a
revolver, as he nervously makes his way to Chicago’s Union Station. There,
Beekman is deliberately bumped into on the loading platform by a trench-coated figure,
aptly nicknamed, Mando – the Thin Man – (James Rebhorn), whose veiled
purpose is to do Beekman and the train some harm. We also catch a glimpse of
newlyweds, Kevin (Kevin Breznahan) and Jenny (Heidi Huber) boarding the car
ahead; the beginnings of a life together, torn asunder a few short hours after
sundown, when the train derails near an isolated bridge, killing, among others,
Jenny and Beekman. Shift focus to the Chicago Chronicle, its staff about to put
the late day edition to bed when news breaks of the derailment. The Chronicle’s
curmudgeonly editor, Matt (Robert Logia) insists columnist, Peter Brackett
cover the story, something he hasn’t done in years. In fact, Brackett’s writing
career has really taken off since the debut of his first novel, ‘White Lies’.
Afforded his own office, a private secretary, Jeannie (Olympia Dukakis) and
minions like Evans (Jane Adams) and Sully (Joseph D'Onofrio) to do his legwork,
Brackett is somewhat rusty on his probative/investigating skills. The good life has made this guy soft in the
head. Hence, when Brackett arrives at the scene of the tragedy, he instantly
becomes more interested in chasing after leggy Sabrina Peterson than the scoop.
Much to Brackett’s dismay, Peterson is wholly unreceptive. The camera cuts away
briefly for a bit of integral exposition. We see a pair of teenage thieves,
Danny Brown (Kimo Wills) and Dixon (Chad Einbinder) swipe a few pieces of
luggage already recovered from the wreck; Mando shielding himself from discovery,
but jotting down the license plate of the teens’ getaway car.
While Brackett hurries off to dictate his findings, before attending a
book-signing party, Peterson gets busy tailing Midrail employee, Ray Boggs (Kurt
V. Hulett), who is suspected of having mismanaged the maintenance of the train’s
coupling, due to his alcoholism, and thus, inadvertently creating the right
circumstances for the crash. Spending all night telephoning every Boggs in the
telephone directory, Peterson eventually winds up in contact with Ray’s mother,
who suggests her son’s drinking problem may have returned to cloud his
judgment. Thus, the next day, while the
Chronicle’s story about the crash is decidedly light on details, the rival Globe
has an inside exclusive interview with Bogg’s mother and wife, written by
Peterson. It isn’t long before a
friendly rivalry sparks between Peterson and Brackett; each attempting to outdo
the other. Despite her relative newness in the field, Peterson holds her own
against the more seasoned Brackett, even if she does fall prey to a few of his
wily ploys, like the aforementioned ‘wild goose chase’. Brackett and Peterson
meet ‘cute’ at an annual newspaperman’s ball. We are also slickly introduced to
oily politico, Sam Smotherman (Saul Rubinek), working for Senator Gayle Robins
(Marsha Mason), and, having the uncanny knack for dating Brackett’s sloppy
seconds. Smotherman’s current flame, Nadia (Laura Maye Tate) is, in fact,
Brackett’s latest castoff. Peterson is not about to put herself in this queue.
Besides, neither reporter seems to have the Midrail derailment story right. Ray
Bogg’s has professed his innocence by passing a polygraph with flying colors.
Oh, no: back to square one for Peterson and Brackett; the latter, getting his
hands on Kevin and Jenny’s videotape shot by their parents at the station
shortly before the train departed. On tape, Brackett observes a half-concealed someone,
disguised as a Midrail worker, toying with the train’s coupling in the
background.
In the meantime, Peterson is contacted by Danny. It seems the kid has
discovered ‘something’ that might be of importance to her investigation. Buoyed
by the prospect of collecting a reward for his efforts, Danny agrees to meet
Peterson at the old abandoned theater; its upstairs balcony, the place he and
Dixon call their home. Alas, someone
gets to the boys first, murdering Danny and leaving Peterson to discover his
body. She takes notice of the letters ‘L’ and ‘D’ scribbled in ink on Danny’s
palm, jotting them down with a pen pilfered from the nearby desk.
Inadvertently, this will turn out to be the same pen Darryl Beekman used to
conceal the microfilm; although neither Peterson nor the audience is aware of
this as yet. Hurrying back to her car, Peterson is briefly startled by the
sudden appearance of Mando, her fitful escape followed by Mando hiring another
assassin, Pecos (Nestor Serrano) to trail Peterson and recover the
microfilm. We momentarily shift to
Brackett’s investigation. Having come to the home of the late Darryl Beekman to
ask a few questions, Brackett is persuaded by a woman masquerading as his
widow, Delores (Megan Cavanagh) to meet with him much later at an office
building downtown where she insists it will ‘be safer’.
After hours, Brackett arrives at the office building, only to discover
Peterson already there; neither comprehending they have been set up until their
elevator suddenly stalls between floors and is fired upon by yet another paid
assassin (Patrick St. Esprit). In their ensuing escape from this hailstorm of
bullets, Brackett manages to cause the assassin to slip and fall to his death
down the elevator shaft; a slip of paper, with the words ‘Ext. 307’ scribbled
on it, slipping out of his coat pocket. Returning to Beekman’s home, Brackett
discovers the family’s Christmas photo and realizes the woman he met at the
front door earlier is not Dolores Beekman. He also finds a discarded, empty
envelope addressed to Darryl Jr. from Spring Creek in the wastepaper basket
with the number ‘307’ written in pen on one of its corners. At the same
instance, Peterson, attending the family’s pet canary with a drink of water, unearths
a piece of newsprint from the Spring Creek Clarion used to line the cage. Lying
to Brackett, that the element of danger is too much for her to bear, Peterson feigns
backing away from the investigation; Brackett, confidently boarding a flight to
Spring Creek later the next afternoon, only to discover Peterson in the seat
next to his.
The two schemers decide to pool their resources and work as a team to
solve this mystery. In Spring Creek, Peterson and Brackett learn of Darryl
Beekman Sr.’s demise in a house fire, the obituary stating that the elder
Beekman was a retired geneticist from Chess Chemical, working on a new compound
referenced only as L.D.F. Making the connection between these call letters, and
the ones scribbled on Danny’s dead hand, Peterson keeps these findings to
herself, incurring Brackett’s displeasure for withholding evidence. The pair
arrive at Chess Chemical and take the company tour to glean all the information
they can about L.D.F; Brackett, later contacting Smotherman to make his
inquiries, regarding its efficacy as a milk additive. Next, the pair attempt to contact Beekman’s
coauthor on the research, Alan Hervey; arriving at his home only to learn from
his wife, Virginia (Lisa Lu) Alan has since suffered a debilitating stroke that
has left him in a permanent catatonic state. Taking adjoining hotel rooms for
the night, Brackett and Peterson scope the local watering hole for potential
Chess employees who might know something – or at least get them past the front
door of the company they so desperately want to search for clues. The two make
plans to meet back at an all-night coffee shop within the hour; Brackett,
latching on to Kim (Kelly Rutherford), a sexy scientist who openly admits being
hot for him. Showing up hours later, but unable to have swiped her company pass,
Brackett becomes nervous when he spies Pecos drinking coffee in a booth on the
left. Alas, Brackett’s intuition proves infallible when he hurries Peterson
into their rented car, only to be held at gunpoint by Pecos, who has since hidden
himself in the backseat. Realizing their only chance at survival is to put
everyone in harm’s way, Brackett drives perilously into an oncoming semi, narrowly
averting disaster at the last possible moment, and, sending the car into a
horrific tailspin that knocks Pecos unconscious.
Escaping on foot into the forest in the middle of the night, Brackett
and Peterson become lost. Old animosities are renewed. Peterson tells Brackett
he has gone soft. Alas, Brackett has the last laugh when Peterson decides to
take an early morning skinny dip; the couple, discovered by a troop of Cub
Scouts. Promising to shield her nakedness from prying eyes, Brackett instead
instructs the boys to pull out their cameras, darting off with Peterson’s
clothes. A short while later, Peterson and Brackett turn up in Atlantic City,
pursued by Pecos but sneaking into a Chapel of Love where they are
inadvertently wed to escape detection. Brackett tries to make the best of their
situation. He even introduces Peterson to Smotherman, who sets up a meeting with
Senator Robbins to discuss L.D.F. – the experimental pasteurization chemical,
newly approved by the FDA, thanks to Robbin’s seal of approval. But Peterson is
up to her old tricks, disguising herself as a Chess Chemical tour guide and
using Kim’s stolen pass to sneak into the company’s restricted areas. She also
has Brackett forcibly ejected from the company on a faux charge of harassment.
Incensed, Brackett elects to take the next plane back to Chicago. He telephones
Smotherman to inform him of these developments; also, to suggest he has had it
with the story. No, Brackett is going back to his old ‘new’ lifestyle; sipping
champagne and ogling starlets poolside.
Only, his own nagging conscience and curiosity will not leave well
enough alone. Discovering too late that Smotherman’s extension at the state
capital is ‘307’, thereby directly linking him to the various attempts on both
their lives, Brackett hurries to Chess Chemical where he discovers Smotherman,
along with the company’s CEO, Wilson Chess (Dan Butler) already having taken
Peterson hostage. She gets the men to confess about their elaborate scheme to
defraud and poison the public using L.D.F. It seems Hervey and Beekman Sr.’s
findings revealed the product’s cancer-causing properties. Beekman wanted no part
of it. But his forced retirement could not ensure his silence. So, he was
killed in a deliberately set house fire. The company could also not be certain
of Hervey’s complicity. So, he was given something to bring about his stroke.
Learning Beekman Sr. had sent his son the microfilm as proof of their findings
beforehand prompted Wilson to hire Mando to ‘take care’ of things on the train;
the blood-letting leading directly to Beekman’s widow, and finally, the various
attempts made on Brackett and Peterson’s lives.
Making his presence known merely to deflect attention away and against
Smotherman putting a bullet in Peterson’s brain, Brackett lures his one-time
friend to a suspended catwalk high above the laboratory. Peterson reveals she has been carrying a
concealed firearm – as she puts it “a must for a woman of the nineties.”
Threatening to shoot Smotherman, he instead calls her bluff; Brackett
instructing Peterson to hang tight as he loosens the wires holding the
suspended catwalk in place. Clinging for dear life to its rickety handle rails,
Brackett and Peterson are spared the perilous plummet to ground level. But
Smotherman falls to his death. The next day, both the Globe and Chronicle’s
headlines and accompanying stories champion their sort of Macy’s/Gimbal’s détente,
leading to the successful resolution of this baffling case. In the final
moments, we learn Brackett and Peterson have decided to give their sham
marriage a sincere try. Presumably, each has embraced the common ground they
share; the friction generated from their professional competition creating
like-minded sparks of sexual magic. However, only a moment or two later,
Peterson is startled by the sound of an alarm going off at the bank across the
street from their hotel room. Attempting to take down particulars of the heist
in progress, Brackett instead takes Peterson into his arms, angling her away
from the open window and pulling down the shade.
I Love Trouble is a fun film. Few – if any – romantic
comedies since have so cleverly wed playful badinage to an almost credible
action/adventure yarn, primarily spent in service to such a lighthearted
romp. Nick Nolte is a gentleman’s rogue,
immaculately quaffed and dressed in some stylish suits, but reverting to the
rumpled trench coat (a sort of Bogart gumshoe trademark), in which he does his
best sleuthing in the picture. Julia Roberts is not as comfortable in her
pavement-pounding patent leather pumps and power-brokering/shoulder padded
ensembles. Apart from her sparring with Nolte, Roberts scenes alone fall flat. Her
best moments are with Nolte – likely, using her built-in contempt for her
costar to her great advantage. The anesthetizing chemistry between these two
works: Nolte’s arrogant charm rubbing Roberts’ stiff scissor-legged vixen just
the right way, the stultifying bloom of virgin-esque frigidity, warming to his sandpaper
grating touch. Mercifully, after a bit of time spent apart in the film’s first
act, this team comes together for the rest of the picture’s 123-minute runtime.
About this: as early as 1997 it was announced in the trades, I Love
Trouble had been rather unceremoniously pruned to accommodate Buena Vista
Distribution’s desire to have a more manageable length for its general
theatrical release. It was then announced that a new 149 min. director’s cut of
the picture not only existed, but would be coming soon to LaserDisc.
Regrettably, by then, DVD had debuted and with it, the obvious death knell for
this large disc format. As the Walt Disney Company scrambled to re-release its
more popular catalog titles to DVD, plans for an extended cut of I Love
Trouble were shelved, then presumably, scrapped – never again to resurface on
the home video radar. At 123-minutes, I Love Trouble never seems rushed
although there are several minor holes (i.e. clarifications) in its narrative,
likely to have been fleshed out in the longer cut. Chief among these is
Brackett and Peterson’s cross-country journey to Arizona to interview the
scientist, Hervey, whom they discover in a catatonic state, managed by his
wife. In its current cut, this scene plays as a needless appendage – or bridge –
to connect two unrelated sequences together; a pretty pointless ‘dead end’ that
fills run time, but precious little else. Alas, with each passing year, and
Disney Inc.’s seeming disinterest to release any of their own live-action movie
catalog to disc format, it becomes less likely that a ‘director’s cut’ of I
Love Trouble will surface.
Not long ago, I wrote extensively about the abysmal quality of
Touchstone Home Video’s DVD of I Love Trouble. In the foreign markets, I
Love Trouble has resurfaced of Blu-ray. Exciting news? Well…sort of. While
the image quality takes a quantum leap ahead of its standard format counterpart
(it wasn’t hard to do…the DVD wasn’t even enhanced for widescreen TVs!!!) we
still do not have a perfect 1080p rendering and this is, quite simply, a shame.
The good news: the foreign market discs are ‘region free’ and will play anywhere.
Better still: color reproduction is spectacular for the most part, showing off
John Lindley’s slick and stylish cinematography to its best advantage. Fine
detail pops as it should, even if a handful of shots remain, appearing softly
focused. Flesh tones are accurate. Contrast is a little anemic and age-related
artifacts, minimal scratches and white speckling persist. The opening credits
are in rougher shape than the rest of the film. There is also some intermittent
edge enhancement. The audio is DTS 5.1, yet unremarkable, even though it too is
a huge improvement over the DVD. I ordered my copy of I Love Trouble from
Amazon.u.k.. The actual disc came from Poland, infinitely cheaper than the
discs selling in Britain. For several years, rumors abounded I Love Trouble
would resurface state’s side, either from Buena Vista or Mill Creek. Currently,
Kino seems to have some sort of third-party distribution deal in place. So,
will we see I Love Trouble released in the U.S. and Canada…or, even in its
extended cut?!? Promises, promises. Bottom line: if you really want this movie,
it’s currently available in hi-def. Loading the disc immediately defaults to a
menu where ‘English’ is the primary option (other languages are available).
Click ‘English’ and all of the menus, as well as the feature itself, remain in
‘English’ with no imposed subtitles. Just click and go. Nicely done. Tragedy:
still no extended cut and NO extras either. Buy this disc with confidence. But
do not expect perfection. You can, however, anticipate a much more film-like
presentation. That’s a plus and the reason I am recommending I Love Trouble
on Blu-ray.
FILM RATING (out of 5 - 5 being the best)
4
VIDEO/AUDIO
3.5
EXTRAS
0
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