George Clooney by Mark Browning Read Free Book Online Page B

do everything on my own,” it seems to be quite strained as if Jack is desperately needing a form of vindication, i.e., that men still have a role in society, even if no one is quite sure what that is.
    At the climactic press conference, as we have learned so little of Jack’s corruption story, it does not seem to matter to the viewer whether he succeeds in proving his point or not. The key witness he has been searching for suddenly appears in a taxi and virtually throws her story at him. The stakes are purely personal in his meeting Melanie at an agreed point in place and time. It is his demonstration of his credentials as a reliable father that matters here. In
Notting Hill
(Roger Michell, 1999), a climactic press conference actually features one of the two protagonists, Anna Scott (Julia Roberts), lending the event a sense of genuine emotional jeopardy, which seems lacking here. Melanie’s outburst in defense of Jack, “at least he’s honest,” seems more motivated to delay the press conference than to express a moment of realization of Jack’s worth.
    In the hectic nature of the narrative, particularly in the number of scenes that show the pair walking through crowded New York streets, it is tempting to see the film as actually dramatizing its very opposite: that here we have two adults for whom children are primarily an encumbrance to be dragged around and palmed off on any available child care. The guilt of using inadequate child care, particularly with reference to the drop-in center, eats away at Melanie. However, she is still someone who is in a position to buy a solution to most of her problems, from taxi rides to last-minute alterations to her broken building model. Ultimately, the film puts forward the fairly conservative notion, that bringing up children with two parents is better than one, but more for the prosaic factor of time sharing than any suggestion of a broader experience of gender and sexuality, and that a modern definition of parental paradise is a half-decent babysitter.
    The film cemented Clooney’s status as a romantic lead (his name, along with Pfeiffer’s is enough to open this picture) but it also developed his on-screen persona, drawing on the child-friendly associations of Doug Rossfrom
ER
. He is likeable and charming, while also a little childish and shy of long-term adult commitment (with a backstory of a failed relationship). Ironically, a central problem for Clooney in any romantic narrative is that he looks like George Clooney. The idea that someone who looks like him would have serious difficulty attracting female attention stretches audience credibility and sympathy. Even here, his face is known, plastered on adverts for his column on buses, and certainly Melanie’s mother is very susceptible to his charm. The central premise of the film is implicit in the slogan accompanying his picture (“You don’t know Jack”). Melanie is forced to accept this, while Jack already sees that she is not as strong and independent as she likes to appear. Most romantic comedies work on the basis of having misconceptions to undermine, but here he seems to read her quite accurately from the outset.
    As an exposé of modern parenthood, it does not take us much beyond cliché, including the parental nightmare of losing a child (although here it is not Melanie’s own). She is more distraught at the prospect of being exposed as an irresponsible parent in the eyes of Jack. The breakdown of the previous relationships of the protagonists seems vindicated: Sammy’s father appears at the soccer game only in order to let the child down about spending time with him, and Kristen’s initial appearance apparently dumping Maggie on Jack for the duration of her honeymoon does seem inconsiderate.
    The puddle scene, signaled as a supposed emotional climax by the swelling score, is mawkish in the extreme, and Van Morrison’s following “Have I Told You