UP CLOSE & PERSONAL (1996) 1/2* If, in the climactic scene of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the character had been Robert Redford instead of Sundance he would have first thrown his guns out the door, then emerged with his hands raised saying "Hey wait, I'm just like you. Well, a little different...but I'll be happy to work within the parameters that you give me." Unlike that one, this film is superficial, pompous bullshit masquerading as liberalism. Several push-button issues (the clash of personality and professional demands, crime and punishment, corporate control of the media) are touched on to remind us of Redford's alleged credentials, but the reality here is that he is glorifying ass-kissing, and accepting a spectacularly limited conservative spectrum of choice, while at the same time portraying an overbearing jackass micromanaging the careers of his employees (dictating hairstyle, demanding that people get his laundry, showing up at their homes talking about fucking, critisizing the employees relentlessly and soliciting their reliance then running away the first time that he's critisized himself) against their express wishes. It's obvious that this is a crass and hypocritical commercial piece of crap almost immediately but about halfway through the bottom just falls out entirely, it's as if John Belushi wrote the script with the sole intention of making the actors look like idiots. "You were good...no, great..." Redford sighs as if his perceptions of greatness retain any meaning or interest, but just when you think it can't get any worse Michelle Pfeiffer joins him in a remarkable stretch of one-upesmanship involving who can utter the most idiotic line in the spirit of monolithic vaucuousness. In the midst of all the flying garbage Redford is obviously bright enough to understand that something is lacking, so he smiles randomly like Tony the Tiger, who advertised something at least less spiritually lethal. Leaves no question as to why Redford thought that Gore was an outstanding Presidential candidate: "he's a sell-out, one of us, and it would be against my great values to consider that there's anything better than one of us, great and rugged individualists I mean, right?" It's movies, aesthetics, and ethics like these that drive you towards stories on people like the Baader-Meinhof gang, who would quite literally rather shoot the producer than participate in premeditated pap of this sub-magnitude. Fortunately there's a great deal of room between the two, as violence is inherently evil and so is submerging one's spirit for the sake of convenience.
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