'80s Roulette: LEGAL EAGLES

Debra Winger + Robert Redford x Daryl Hannah with a dash of Ivan Reitman equals not much

I have every single movie released in the United States on a hard drive and once I week, I’m going to hit shuffle and review whatever film comes up first.

Welcome to ‘80s Roulette!

JUNE 18, 1986 (limited)

Legal Eagles
Robert Redford, Debra Winger, Daryl Hannah, Brian Dennehy, Terence Stamp, Steven Hill, David Clennon, John McMartin, Jennifer Dundas, Roscoe Lee Brown, Christine Baranski, Sara Botsford, David Hart, James Hurdle, Gary Howard Klar, Christian Clemenson, Bart Burns, Bruce French, Lynn Hamilton, Paul Jabara, Chevi Colton, Annie Abbott, Kristine Sutherland, Everett Quinton, Peter Boyden, Thomas Barbour, Mary Griffin, Vincent Guastaferro, Burke Byrnes, Ken Kilban, Debra Stricklin, Ron Foster, Rudolph Willrich, Robert Benedetti, Grant Heslov, Robert Curtis Brown, Brian Doyle-Murray, Shannon Wilcox, Charles Brown, Kevin Hagan, Jay Thomas, Alex Nevil, Lou Cutell, Olivia Ward, Dutch Helmer, John Marion, Barbara Pallenberg, Gabrielle de Cuir, Liz Sheridan, Michael Anthony
cinematography by Laszlo Kovacs
music by Elmer Bernstein
screenplay by Jim Cash & Jack Epps Jr.
story by Ivan Reitman & Jim Cash & Jack Epps Jr.
produced byIvan Reitman and Joe Medjuck
directed by Ivan Reitman
Rated PG
1 hr 56 mins

A wise-assed ADA gets caught up in a case involving a young performance artist, her father’s missing art, and the also-wise-assed attorney representing her.

Universal decided to get a headstart by releasing Legal Eagles on Wednesday in a number of markets before going wide on Friday, and considering the film made just under $100 million at the US box office, that has to be seen as a victory for a film as barely-taped-together as this.

Ivan Reitman might be the sloppiest filmmaker to ever end up on the A-list. Even his best film, Ghostbusters, just barely works as a movie because they managed to pull it together in post-production. This is a prime example of what happened when CAA ran the industry and films were packaged instead of produced. This was a movie that was assembled by a talent agency, consisting entirely of their clients, and getting the payday was the punchline at the expense of something coherent or entertaining. Reitman’s original idea was “something set in the art world,” and the first version of the script that was developed was supposed to be a buddy comedy starring Dustin Hoffman and Bill Murray as lawyers, because Reitman saw lawyers as the ultimate problem solvers. That’s an insane place to start with for a comedy, and when Murray dropped out, they made the completely logical decision to reimagine the film as a romantic comedy.

*sigh*