Short and Padded

Rating: 5/10 (2 May 2006)

"Good Night and Good Luck" isn't a bad movie, but it's certainly an over-hyped one. There simply isn't much to it. At 93 minutes, it is surely one of the shortest Oscar-nominated films of recent times. So what, you say -- a movie can cover a lot in an hour and a half if the script is tight. That's true, but this has to be one of the least tight scripts I've seen put on film. At least thirty of the 93 minutes is blatant filler. There are several musical montages that do little to advance the plot (one is a pure music video with no plot whatsoever). And there's an uninteresting subplot about the relationship between Robert Downey Jr. and Patricia Clarkson that serves no purpose other than to pad the movie's running time. What's left is the material of an hour-long History Channel show, except the History Channel wouldn't have such cartoonish portrayals of the heroes and villains of the story. Granted, the History Channel also wouldn't have the cool black-and-white cinematography, or the interesting period details like Murrow using cigarettes as props in his newscasts. But there are plenty of movies that have interesting images and also manage to include involving plots and three-dimensional characters. Rent one of those and skip this one.