A war between style and substance breaks out in the very first minutes of "Isn't She Great", and style wins at every turn.
Only the style of this particular film rarely suits its substance, which turns "Isn't She Great" into a weird hybrid -- the celebrity biopic as musical, only without music.
What today's audiences are going to make of this gloss on the life of best-selling trash novelist Jacqueline Susann is hard to tell. "Valley of the Dolls" was a long time ago, so the film will have to rely largely on middle-age moviegoers and Bette Midler fans. That may not be enough in theatrical release, but the movie could be a lively performer in downstream markets.
The film derives from a 1995 New Yorker magazine piece by book editor and memoirist Michael Korda. In "Wasn't She Great", Korda told the unconventional love story of Susann, an ambitious Jewish girl who just wanted to be famous, and Irving Mansfield, the manager and publicist who adored her, married her and made her dream come true before she died of cancer at an early age.
Writer Paul Rudnick's take on this tale, ably abetted by the smart filmmaking team of director Andrew Bergman and producer Mike Lobell, views Susann as one of those wildly eccentric, larger-than-life great dames of musical theater, having more in common with Dolly Levi or Auntie Mame than Danielle Steel. When she walks into Lindy's, you half expect the waiters to break into a chorus of "Isn't She Great!"
And with Midler playing Jackie and Broadway star Nathan Lane playing Irving and Burt Bacharach aboard as composer, why not? Yet except for Midler teaming with Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme (played by their son, David Lawrence, and Debbie Gravitte), the two singers warble nary a note.
In a movie Bergman admits is only "loosely based" on Susann's life, Jackie is transformed into a crass, spotlight-loving funny girl in danger of drifting from show business wannabe into never-was before Irving rescues her and turns her into a best-selling writer. In the Mansfields' opulent Manhattan apartment, actors and editors dash in and out with comic fury, joke lines hit with staccato intensity -- "Irving, can I write about orgasms?" -- and the only deep, dark secrets in their lives are Jackie's cancer and their autistic son.
Jettisoned from this sanitized account are Jackie's drug binges, her innumerable affairs with the famous and infamous, her strange relationship with her father and the true horror of the institution that housed her son. Even some of its "facts" get misstated. Truman Capote did indeed say of a rival author, "That isn't writing. That's typing." Only he said it of Jack Kerouac, not Jackie Susann.
The film does touch briefly on Susann's marketing genius, her willingness to hit the road and hustle "Valley of the Dolls" with the personal touch at even the smallest bookseller. (The book did sell 19 million copies.) But as with her cute conversations with God, held periodically at a well-lit tree in Central Park, her hustle is seen only in the context of lovably eccentricity.
Central to "Isn't She Great" is the love story between Jackie and Irving. Yet the film never quite gets around to a love scene. The closest Rudnick and Bergman come is a negotiation, again in Central Park, in which Jackie sweet talks Irving into becoming her agent.
Indeed Midler and Lane rarely stand close to one another. Did they suspect their own show business personas would not mesh in this particular story?
One thing the movie does not lack is energy. Stockard Channing, looking like she dropped in from a valley of the dolls holiday, is ever supportive and wisecracking -- as best girl pals always are. John Cleese and David Hyde Pierce make an amusing comic duo as the buoyant publisher and prissy editor who come to adore their gutsy authoress.
Amanda Peet, as an early supporter of Jackie's at the publishing house, is highly animated though without a distinct role to play. Even Jackie's poodle brightly jumps into people's arms on cue.
On the technical side, designer Stuart Wurtzel and cinematographer Karl Walter Lindenlaub go for Day-Glo colors and high key lighting to emphasize the cheery side of the Jackie-Irving love tale.
There's no denying "Isn't She Great" is trashy fun (and could have been much trashier if the filmmakers have been so inclined). But, ultimately, the viewer can't help feeling that Jacqueline Susann is largely irrelevant to her own celebrity biopic.
ISN'T SHE GREAT
Universal Pictures
Universal Pictures and Mutual Film Co. present a Lobell/Bergman production
Producer:Mike Lobell
Director:Andrew Bergman
Screenwriter:Paul Rudnick
Based on an article by:Michael Korda
Executive producers:Ted Kurdyla, Gary Levinsohn, Mark Gordon
Director of photography:Karl Walter Lindenlaub
Production designer:Stuart Wurtzel
Music:Burt Bacharach
Costume designer:Julie Weiss
Editor:Barry Malkin
Color/stereo
Cast:
Jacqueline Susann:Bette Midler
Irving Mansfield:Nathan Lane
Florence Maybelle:Stockard Channing
Michael Mastings:David Hyde Pierce
Henry Marcus:John Cleese
Debbie:Amanda Peet
Maury Manning:John Larroquette
Running time -- 96 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
Only the style of this particular film rarely suits its substance, which turns "Isn't She Great" into a weird hybrid -- the celebrity biopic as musical, only without music.
What today's audiences are going to make of this gloss on the life of best-selling trash novelist Jacqueline Susann is hard to tell. "Valley of the Dolls" was a long time ago, so the film will have to rely largely on middle-age moviegoers and Bette Midler fans. That may not be enough in theatrical release, but the movie could be a lively performer in downstream markets.
The film derives from a 1995 New Yorker magazine piece by book editor and memoirist Michael Korda. In "Wasn't She Great", Korda told the unconventional love story of Susann, an ambitious Jewish girl who just wanted to be famous, and Irving Mansfield, the manager and publicist who adored her, married her and made her dream come true before she died of cancer at an early age.
Writer Paul Rudnick's take on this tale, ably abetted by the smart filmmaking team of director Andrew Bergman and producer Mike Lobell, views Susann as one of those wildly eccentric, larger-than-life great dames of musical theater, having more in common with Dolly Levi or Auntie Mame than Danielle Steel. When she walks into Lindy's, you half expect the waiters to break into a chorus of "Isn't She Great!"
And with Midler playing Jackie and Broadway star Nathan Lane playing Irving and Burt Bacharach aboard as composer, why not? Yet except for Midler teaming with Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme (played by their son, David Lawrence, and Debbie Gravitte), the two singers warble nary a note.
In a movie Bergman admits is only "loosely based" on Susann's life, Jackie is transformed into a crass, spotlight-loving funny girl in danger of drifting from show business wannabe into never-was before Irving rescues her and turns her into a best-selling writer. In the Mansfields' opulent Manhattan apartment, actors and editors dash in and out with comic fury, joke lines hit with staccato intensity -- "Irving, can I write about orgasms?" -- and the only deep, dark secrets in their lives are Jackie's cancer and their autistic son.
Jettisoned from this sanitized account are Jackie's drug binges, her innumerable affairs with the famous and infamous, her strange relationship with her father and the true horror of the institution that housed her son. Even some of its "facts" get misstated. Truman Capote did indeed say of a rival author, "That isn't writing. That's typing." Only he said it of Jack Kerouac, not Jackie Susann.
The film does touch briefly on Susann's marketing genius, her willingness to hit the road and hustle "Valley of the Dolls" with the personal touch at even the smallest bookseller. (The book did sell 19 million copies.) But as with her cute conversations with God, held periodically at a well-lit tree in Central Park, her hustle is seen only in the context of lovably eccentricity.
Central to "Isn't She Great" is the love story between Jackie and Irving. Yet the film never quite gets around to a love scene. The closest Rudnick and Bergman come is a negotiation, again in Central Park, in which Jackie sweet talks Irving into becoming her agent.
Indeed Midler and Lane rarely stand close to one another. Did they suspect their own show business personas would not mesh in this particular story?
One thing the movie does not lack is energy. Stockard Channing, looking like she dropped in from a valley of the dolls holiday, is ever supportive and wisecracking -- as best girl pals always are. John Cleese and David Hyde Pierce make an amusing comic duo as the buoyant publisher and prissy editor who come to adore their gutsy authoress.
Amanda Peet, as an early supporter of Jackie's at the publishing house, is highly animated though without a distinct role to play. Even Jackie's poodle brightly jumps into people's arms on cue.
On the technical side, designer Stuart Wurtzel and cinematographer Karl Walter Lindenlaub go for Day-Glo colors and high key lighting to emphasize the cheery side of the Jackie-Irving love tale.
There's no denying "Isn't She Great" is trashy fun (and could have been much trashier if the filmmakers have been so inclined). But, ultimately, the viewer can't help feeling that Jacqueline Susann is largely irrelevant to her own celebrity biopic.
ISN'T SHE GREAT
Universal Pictures
Universal Pictures and Mutual Film Co. present a Lobell/Bergman production
Producer:Mike Lobell
Director:Andrew Bergman
Screenwriter:Paul Rudnick
Based on an article by:Michael Korda
Executive producers:Ted Kurdyla, Gary Levinsohn, Mark Gordon
Director of photography:Karl Walter Lindenlaub
Production designer:Stuart Wurtzel
Music:Burt Bacharach
Costume designer:Julie Weiss
Editor:Barry Malkin
Color/stereo
Cast:
Jacqueline Susann:Bette Midler
Irving Mansfield:Nathan Lane
Florence Maybelle:Stockard Channing
Michael Mastings:David Hyde Pierce
Henry Marcus:John Cleese
Debbie:Amanda Peet
Maury Manning:John Larroquette
Running time -- 96 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
- 1/28/2000
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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