Over-Rated & Disappointing

Rating: 6/10 (8 February 2006)

Welcome to one of the most disappointing and over-rated films of the year: GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK. A look at Edward R. Murrow and Senator McCarthy should have been riveting and inspiring. Instead this flat feature is dull and uneventful. Director Clooney employs gimmicks galore to seduce his audience, but he can't overcome a lackluster script and his own neophyte direction enough to do more than scratch the surface of a fascinating time and place. Clever cuss Cooney's monochromatic lensing is the film's first big mistake. No one under 45 associates black and white with anything but oft-repeated sitcoms like I LOVE LUCY and Hollywood films: both fiction. The gimmick only served to distance the viewer from the subject, not lend veracity. While the first rate cast is in fine form, they have all been better elsewhere (including the much-praised Straithern as Morrow). Using Patricia Clarkson and Robert Downey Jr. as a metaphor for CBS's own private witch hunt (no employees may be married) relegates them to symbolic status, robbing them of any reality. As they lie in bed staring into space, I felt their boredom with their limited characters. Clooney telegraphs every plot point and uses heavy handed symbolism at every turn. From Ray Wise's first screen shot, I knew (without knowledge of the real-life Hollenbeck's fate) that a Willy Loman-esquire gas pipe was in his future. A shot of Frank Langella's Bill Paley alone in a studio tells us nothing without a single glimpse of the actor's face. It's lonely at the top? Tell us something we didn't know. A Morrow interview with Liberace oddly avoids a single raised eyebrow when Lee is questioned about his marriage plans. A second interview with a Gabor is so short we're not even sure which Hungarian sister he's interviewing. A little humor here was much needed, but Clooney misses again. Kinescopes of McCarthy's hearings go on far too long, making us long for a proper documentary on the subject instead of this pseudo-effort. The script also inexplicably avoids any mention of CBS's biggest star of the 1950's, Lucille Ball. Ball herself was accused of being a communist in 1953, putting CBS's cash cow "I Love Lucy" in serious jeopardy. Clooney's Paley never even mentions the redhead or her red scare experience. Instead, he mystifies most viewers with mentions of Uncle Miltie in a dress (Berle was important to the decade, but has not withstood the test of time like Ms. Ball's sitcom.) He also invokes the name of "The $64,000 Question" which only brings to mind a far superior film of similar topic and time period: QUIZ SHOW. For further comparison on what to do when making a bio pic of the era, see CAPOTE. Where GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK fails (even when it dazzles) CAPOTE succeeds - in living color.