The role provides a sharp contrast to the icy villain she plays in this year’s Ready or Not, hell-bent on murdering a new daughter-in-law. Later, she and Hurt dance through the streets of New York City, everyone around them frozen in time.
#MICAHEL DANCE MOVES THE OFFICE SCRIPT FULL#
In one scene, she sings a Newman song about loving pie to a table full of men. As she often did in that bygone decade, the MacDowell of Michael is overflowing with a pure sort of charm and guilelessness.
#MICAHEL DANCE MOVES THE OFFICE SCRIPT MOVIE#
“Does this entire movie … hinge on a tabloid kingpin’s love for a small dog?”Īndie MacDowell is a big part of why Michael works. “Wait, is John Travolta … wearing gigantic angel wings … and fucking a judge in her chambers … to get out of prison time for a bar fight?” you might ask, looking around your apartment, wondering if you have accidentally died. Watching it in 2019 - when the general cultural vibe is “cynical fisting” - feels like doing soft drugs.
(At one point, a straight-faced Travolta explains that he invented “waiting in line.”) It’s earnest and tender, a love letter to the physical pleasures of being alive - eating, drinking, smoking, singing, dancing, making love, staring at gigantic balls of twine - that feels all the more bittersweet now that Ephron is gone. It’s a strange, ambling little movie, shot through with Ephron’s signature wit. While I wouldn’t exactly call Michael a masterpiece, I’ve always had a soft spot for it. The take at the time of its release was even harsher (one reviewer in Variety wrote that Ephron lacked “ the vision and skill” to pull off the screwball comedy). The consensus now is that it’s one of Ephron’s worst films, usually dismissed or ignored in evaluations of her work. That’s the way to true love.”Īt the time of its release, Michael fell into another very specific ’90s trope: a small, sweet, critically maligned film that still managed to pull in nearly $100 million at the box office and become a low-key millennial classic (other entries in this esteemed field include Practical Magic, Now and Then, and Phenomenon). Michael included, but was not limited to, the following details: Travolta smoking, shirtless, in a pair of overalls MacDowell singing about heartbreak at a dive bar in double flannel a plinky-plonky Randy Newman score the literal resurrection of a pet dog a gentle, almost subversive take on the motivations of tabloid journalists a benign vision of Christianity, unyoked to politics women in boot-cut denim dancing to “Chain of Fools” and the line, “You gotta learn to laugh.
On Christmas Day in 1996, one of the most profoundly ’90s films ever made hit theaters: Nora Ephron’s Michael, starring John Travolta as a fallen angel who embarks upon a genial Midwestern road trip alongside some tabloid journalists (Andie MacDowell, William Hurt, and Robert Pastorelli) tasked with exposing him.
Photo: Photo Illustration by Stevie Remsberg and Photo by New Line Cinema Want to hear Andie MacDowell sing the pie song from Michael? You’re in luck!
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