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By
NICK ZEGARAC
Charles Shyer’s I Love
Trouble (1994) is an adroit romantic
comedy/thriller deriving much of its flair and
theme from MGM’s old ‘Thin Man’ serial. Slickly
packaged and with a palpable chemistry between its
stars; Nick Nolte and Julia Roberts, the film
moves like gangbusters through a series of
confusing vignettes – most totally implausible,
none seeming obviously so upon first glance.
Nolte is star newspaper columnist, Peter Brackett
– a loveable womanizer headlining Chicago’s
Chronicle. When all other reporters prove
previously engaged, Peter’s editor Matt (Robert
Loggia) sends him to cover a story about a fatal
train derailment. On assignment, Peter bumps
pencil and notepad with Sabrina Peterson (Roberts)
who works for his rival, The Banner.
All Peter wants is to wrap up his copy and get
back to his book signing party. Unfortunately,
Sabrina wants the real story. Sabrina scoops Peter
on details that might suggest ‘the accident’ was
deliberately staged, forcing Peter’s vanity to
give in and challenge Sabrina to a classic
showdown of ‘covering the beat.’ After dogging one
another on the printed page, Brackett and Peterson
work feverishly to uncover more clues, eventually
teaming on a story that has more twists and turns
than a roller coaster at Coney Island.
Parts of the narrative structure of this film have
never made sense (such as the decoy Brackett
encounters at the home of the late Darryl Beekman
who nervously instructs him to meet later at her
office because “it’s safe there” – then completely
vanishes from the screenplay and from the general
importance of the subplot), presumably because
director Shyer was forced to hack into his longer
cut of the film after its preview, thereby
disrupting the film’s continuity. In the
mid-1990s, Buena Vista toyed with the idea of
doing a director’s cut laserdisc. The disc was
announced and then pulled when DVD made its debut
in 1997. To date, only the truncated theatrical
release of I Love Trouble has been made available
to the consumer. Perhaps one day, we’ll get the
rest.
Touchstone’s DVD is as bare bones as the
technology gets; not anamorphic but widescreen and
with zero extras. Colors can be rich and vibrant.
Blacks are deep and velvety. Whites are generally
clean. There is an obvious amount of age related
artifacts but the overall image quality is
remarkably smooth and refined with enough fine
detail present throughout to make for a visually
pleasing presentation on the whole. The audio is
stereo surround and quite adequate for this film. |
