Switching Channels movie review (1988)

So maybe it’s only appropriate that the latest remake of “The Front Page” involves not newspapers, but a TV cable news operation.

Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, who wrote the classic play, might even approve. They abandoned Chicago for Hollywood, where remakes were routine and the 1931 screen version of “The Front Page” was updated nine years later in “His Girl Friday” by simply making one of the boys in the pressroom into a girl.

“The Front Page” was filmed again by Billy Wilder in 1974, with Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, and now here is Ted Kotcheff’s 1988 version, titled “Switching Channels” and starring Burt Reynolds, Kathleen Turner and Christopher Reeve. It’s not as good as “His Girl Friday,” but it’s comparable to the others.

Turner plays a hard-driving TV news reporter who seems willing, in the opening credits, to go anywhere and do anything as long as the videotape is rolling. Reynolds is her ex-husband and current boss, the managing editor of the cable news operation. On a long-overdue vacation, Turner falls in love with Christopher Reeve, who plays a New York millionaire. She decides to quit TV, marry Reeve and move to New York. But hold on a minute: A famous criminal is scheduled to be executed at midnight, and Reynolds will do anything to keep his star reporter on the story.

This is more or less the same premise as the first three versions, allowing for the adjustments that have to be made when the star reporter is a woman (as Rosalind Russell was in the 1940 edition). Reeve’s role has been greatly expanded (the fiance was mostly offstage in the earlier versions), and I’m not sure that’s a good thing. Too much time is wasted while Reynolds and Reeve insult each other while the news is put on hold.

But Turner has perfect timing as the long-suffering anchor, and she and Reynolds work up a nice sweat and some good chemistry in their relationship, which seems to be based on a few good memories and a whole lot of one-liners. The Reeve character is unnecessary much of the time, but Reeve has fun with it anyway, with his floppy tailored suits, his newly blond hair and his willingness to accommodate the obviously derailed Turner.