I Love Trouble ** (1994, Julia Roberts, Nick Nolte) – Classic Movie Review 3694

Julia Roberts and Nick Nolte star as Chicago newspaper reporter rivals Sabrina Peterson and Peter Brackett, who, instead of competing, reluctantly link up after a suspicious train crash to investigate the mystery.

Co-writer/director Charles Shyer’s very shaky and disappointing old-style 1994 romantic comedy thriller is in The Thin Man witty banter vein, with a solid, classy production but a rickety script by Shyer and producer Nancy Meyers and an uncomfortably paired star duo that raises no sparks.

Just what went wrong in the chemistry between Roberts and Nolte? They absolutely get no help from the script. The plot doesn’t involve you properly, the dialogue fails to sparkle with the required glossy wit and the movie is over-long, too, at 125 minutes.

Nolte’s quite good, though, and there’s a decent production, with good-looking old-style production designs by Dean Tavoularis.

It helps that also in the cast are a number of highly admired character actors, including Saul Rubinek, James Rebhorn, Robert Loggia, Kelly Rutherford, Olympia Dukakis, Marsha Mason, Eugene Levy, Charles Martin Smith, Dan Butler, Paul Gleason, Jane Adams, Lisa Lu and Nora Dunn. The cast also includes Hallie Meyers-Shyer, Boone David Cates, Richard Brown, Clark Gregg and Kevin Breznahan.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3694

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