The Paper 1994
I remember seeing this movie when it came out and enjoying it. I got a digital copy of it recently and thought it would make for something easy to watch, which it totally is. This isn't a particularly hard hitting movie about the newspaper business and, in fact, spends a lot of time, maybe most of its time, on the personal lives of a few of the main characters including Michael Keaton as the metro desk editor of a newspaper kind of like The New York Post, and his wife, Marisa Tomei, who is on leave from the same newspaper with a pregnancy that is almost due (and has a fake belly that looks well beyond that, maybe with twins). There is a really good cast at work including Randy Quaid, Glenn Close, and Robert Duvall and a nice cameo by Spalding Gray. I forgot that the soundtrack is by Randy Newman, though I feel like it is a little out of place, a little too derivative of his work on That Natural. It was directed by Ron Howard and maybe that is part of why it feels a little too nice and too lightweight. At its heart there is a pretty good story about how the paper chooses to cover a murder and fights a deadline to uncover just enough truth to accurately present the story. It is fun to watch even though it seems like it has been mostly forgotten.
Written: 26 Mar 2025
Owned on: Digital