“Speechless”-a Geena Davis-Michael Keaton movie about two warring campaign spin doctors who fall in love-raises the question of whether we can find politics charming and funny at all anymore, particularly within the frame of a semi-realistic romantic comedy.
And particularly set against the real-life, big-money swamp of modern-day U.S. electoral politics, with hundreds of millions of dollars spent on hatchet-swinging juggernaut campaigns where candidates savage and blast each other in half-minute TV ads.
Dark, venomous satires like Tim Robbins’ 1992 “Bob Roberts”-or Robert Altman’s less caustic “Tanner ’88”-are suitable for such a mindless and brutally Darwinian spectacle. But the old Hollywood-style political romance-“State of the Union,” “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” or even “The Great McGinty” (the whole genre that had a brief renaissance last year with Ivan Reitman’s “Dave”)-may be harder to revive.
That’s only part of what “Speechless” tries to do-and fails. Obviously paralleling the romance of rival Clinton and Bush presidential campaign staff members James Carville and Mary Matalin (which “Speechless’ ” script is said to have preceded), it’s built around the idea that politics is corrupt but love conquers all-that lovers make the best politics-which is pretty much what Jimmy Stewart’s Sen. Jefferson Smith sold us. Here, the context sabotages the sentiment.
In “Speechless,” Davis plays Julia Mann, an idealistic liberal writing for an up-from-blue-collar-ranks Democrat, Wannamaker (Mitchell Ryan), while Keaton is Kevin Vallick, a pragmatic, loose-limbed TV sitcom writer wordsmithing for a millionaire businessman, Republican Garvin (Ray Baker). The two scribes meet cute (and anonymously) over Nytol at the New Mexico hotel where both senatorial campaigns have their headquarters. They fall in love-or at least a mixture of lust and like-at first sight, and then briefly turn poisonous enemies when they discover each other’s identities.
Modern New Mexico, with its barren Old West landscapes juiced up with modern technology, is a neat backdrop for this affair, and director Ron Underwood has proven he’s at home in this kind of milieu before (in “Tremors” and “City Slickers”). Before long, that desert blooms. Desire beats out ideology and the two love-hawks are scrambling and sneaking all around their war zone, even as the campaigns ignite and both sides grow paranoid over leaks and “fraternization.”
When I first heard of “Speechless,” I thought it was a crummy idea for a movie: politics as a background for the usual dewy-eyed, cold-hearted movie kitsch. But, watching the film, you can see that it should have worked. It’s actually a terrific idea that wasn’t made right, that maybe can’t be made right in our current grab-the-crowd movie environment.
As the lovestruck spin doctors, Davis and Keaton are deft and likable. Their characters make sense. And they even make sense together, just as, in interviews, you can sense the weird crackle and chemistry between Matalin and Carville.
It’s easy to see why an organized, high-energy political driver like Julia would be repelled and fascinated by the equally talented but playfully hedonistic, inwardly romantic Kevin, who tends to tweak her worst fantasies about Republicans as materialists and double-dealers (just as she fulfills his fantasies about liberal women as judgmental and fanatic).
Kevin also attracts Julia because his cynicism is so boyishly upfront, because he doesn’t try to mask it with homilies and try to be sensitive and reasonable like her other stiff-necked suitor, TV reporter Bob Freed (Christopher Reeve) a k a “Baghdad Bob.” (The movie may buy partly into the pop zeitgeist notion-popular among male Republicans-that GOP men are sexier because they haven’t been neutralized by the women’s movement.)
Conversely, Julia attracts Kevin because he senses the brainy tiger beneath her “correct” exterior, because he knows she’d want to throw a faithless lover off a cliff (instead of going to a couple’s therapist) the same way he would. The movie is careful to establish Julia as more genuinely politically minded than Kevin, a raffish jokester disillusioned with politics who’s doing the job as a favor for his hard-edged ex-wife, and the campaign’s press secretary, Annette (Bonnie Bedelia).
Behind the badinage, Kevin and Julia are tuned in to each other’s high-speed IQs and sexiness. But even when they trade barbs and Kevin scores Julia as a “tax-and-spend liberal,” there’s no sting in his thrusts (as there is in some of hers). He’s only trying to rack up points.
The lovers come across. It’s the world around them that’s gone wrong. Everything is shortcut, gaggy, obvious. You can sense a real failure of nerve in this movie, particularly at the end, which underwent re-shooting when audience previews tested poorly. The show that’s resulted has faulty rhythm, a peculiar, rushed climax and not much focus beyond a dizzy infatuation with its central couple.
It’s now pretty much a “You-and-me-against-the-world-babe” romance, a popular movie-genre of the “Me Generation” ’70s. The only point “Speechless” dredges out of its Senate race is that TV-slanted political campaigns are often shallow, misleading and dopey (no arguments there) and that, in this case, both candidates are rotten.
Real-life modern electoral politics have become so debased by TV campaigns that these love-conquers-all sentiments seem almost naive. The satiric lances in “Speechless,” however they began in Robert King’s script, have been homogenized and gutted. The supporting characters-including the colorful stereotypes played by Ernie Hudson (avuncular), Charles Martin Smith (harried) and Gailard Sartain (modern good ol’ boy)-all collapse into the usual foils and phonies. “Speechless” winds up peddling the main prime-time TV message: Cute Conquers All. As for the issues floating around, from economic suffering and injustice on one side to the excesses of swollen big government on the other, they’re all just fodder for snappy spats and patter.
Back in 1939, the classic “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” got all the contemporary edge and heart “Speechless” wants by conveying some of the urgency and ferment of the New Deal years. That movie actually was heightened by its own conflicting viewpoints. Director Frank Capra was a Republican and his writer, Sidney Buchman, was a Communist.
Those political schisms couldn’t dilute “Mr. Smith,” and neither could studio dictums. Capra and Buchman’s movie was a great romantic comedy, paced and staged like a beautifully managed political campaign. “Speechless,” on the other hand, is like a bad campaign: half-smart, smiley, unfocused, desperate to tell the audience whatever it wants to hear. And it’s caught in a conflict. Where movie romantic comedies are supposed to play with love, today’s TV-based electoral politics deal mostly with arousing fear and hate. In “Speechless,” those opposites just don’t attract.
”SPEECHLESS”
(STAR)(STAR)
Directed by Ron Underwood; written by Robert King; photographed by Don Peterman; edited by Richard Francis-Bruce; production designed by Dennis Washington; music by Marc Shaiman; produced by Renny Harlin and Geena Davis. An MGM-UA release; opens Friday at Webster Place, Water Tower and outlying theatres. Running time: 1:38. MPAA rating: PG-13. Language, sensuality, nudity, violence.
THE CAST
Kevin Vallick………………….Michael Keaton
Julia Mann……………………….Geena Davis
“Baghdad Bob” Freed………….Christopher Reeve
Annette……………………….Bonnie Bedelia
Ventura…………………………Ernie Hudson
Kratz……………………Charles Martin Smith
