Tonight's Movie: I Love Trouble (1994)

Julia Roberts and Nick Nolte star as sparring news reporters in I LOVE TROUBLE (1994).

The movie was directed by Charles Shyer, who passed away last year; it was written by Shyer and his wife, Nancy Meyers.

This film, released over three decades ago, attempts to be a throwback to classic screwball comedies, with a bickering couple who eventually fall in love. The movie is only somewhat successful; it's mildly diverting but not much more than that, despite the star wattage of Julia Roberts.

Nolte and Roberts play Peter Brackett and Sabrina Peterson, who work for rival Chicago newspapers. She's new on the job and very gung ho, while he's been working in the business for years and is juggling a newspaper column with his career as a crime novelist.

Brackett and Peterson meet while covering a train derailment, and it's off to the races as the accident leads them to discover a much bigger story. Attempts on their lives lead to the two reporters teaming up, though they still can't quite resist trying to score unique bits of information.

Roberts has always been a favorite, and she's as pleasant to watch as always. Nolte is less appealing but adequate. He's probably too old for Roberts, with a 26-year age gap, but the difference is acknowledged and I can't say it bothered me.

There are some good scenes sprinkled throughout, especially when the duo end up having an unexpected Vegas wedding as a way to hide out from the bad guys. That moment got a chuckle out of me.

Both reporters, on the other hand, need to learn not to meet sources late at night in empty buildings!

Speaking of late-night meetings, the film has uneasy balance between light comedy and deadly murder. The attempts on Brackett and Peterson's lives are very real, yet they never really seem to take it seriously, each living up to the film's title. It's a bit difficult for the viewer to take it seriously as well, given the number of bullets they face which never manage to hit them.

Other than a brief look at a corpse, this film from Disney's late, lamented Touchstone division is very PG despite all the murder attempts, so that aspect was quite welcome to this viewer.

Like other films of this era, a fun aspect is seeing how technology has changed over the years. For example, in 1994 cell phones were still not a thing, but an airplane phone for in-flight calls was available; computers were still fairly primitive.

The movie has a welcome number of familiar faces, most in small roles. Clark Gregg, later to be Agent Coulson of Marvel's AVENGERS movies and TV series, plays one of the passengers on the train.

Marsha Mason shows up very briefly as a senator, in a role not fully fleshed out, with Olympia Dukakis as Nolte's secretary. Kelly Rutherford of TV's HOMEFRONT series plays a lab employee. Also on hand are Robert Loggia, Charles Martin Smith, Saul Rubinek, Lisa Lu, and Eugene Levy.

The movie, which runs a slightly too long 123 minutes, was filmed by John Lindley and scored by Thomas Newman.

A trailer is available. I watched the film on DVD. It also had a VHS release. It doesn't appear to have ever come out on Blu-ray.

As a side note, the movie bears no relationship to the detective film I LOVE TROUBLE (1948).

In the end, one could find better entertainment, but a viewer could also do quite a bit worse.  The movie is fairly pleasant company, and Julia Roberts fans in particular will want to check it out.

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