Thursday, July 16, 2020

'I LOVE TROUBLE'..........AND LITTLE ELSE


I Love Trouble Poster

I Love Trouble (1994)
........falls into a mish-mash genre that flourished in the 90's......the rom-com thriller.

                This usually meant throwing together two movie stars who'll trade witty banter with each other while dodging bullets, assassins and colliding vehicles of all types.......

                 As you might imagine, the success of such films didn't depend so much on the action sequences as it did on the personal chemistry of the romantic partners.

                  If nothing else, 'I Love Trouble' stands out mainly for  featuring two actors, Julia Roberts and Nick Nolte, who clearly despised each other......

                    The real creative force in this movie was the team of hardworking film editors who worked minor miracles in cobbling together romantic interludes between Nolte and Roberts, even when the two actors refused to appear in the same shot together......

                    That's almost akin to those star-crossed movies where the editors were forced to re-arrange footage after one of the major actors died in mid-production........

                    Other than the obvious zero chemistry between the stars, 'I Love Trouble' still remains entirely watchable, as far as thrillers go. Nolte and Roberts play rival Chicago journalists who dig up a corporate conspiracy that's racking up a steady body count and deploying creepy hitmen to take out our ever squabbling lovebirds. 

                     The duo barely bat an eye at the perpetual attempts made on their lives and the villains remain generic and uninteresting....(they're just bland Hitchcock McGuffins).......so the film has to rely on the actors' charm to see it through, which in this case is non-existent. 

                     We're certain Nick and Julia long ago deleted this movie from their resumes, but we took another peek since it so fondly reminded us of our busy days as a video chain movie-buyer......when Disney, under their Touchstone and Hollywood Pictures banners, pumped out dozens and dozens of such slick star packages........which briefly stopped in at theaters before nesting comfortably on VHS.

                     Didn't mind it at all.......but chances are, we'd never bother with it again, 2 stars (**)

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