Wednesday, June 7, 2000
Good writing elevates Gossip
By BOB THOMPSON
Toronto Sun
Bad gossip is about you. Good gossip is about everybody else.
Gossip, the Davis Guggenheim film, is about both of those good and bad things when three New York journalism students spread a rumour, then track its ever-changing details as a school project.
The supposedly harmless information plant gets transformed from asides about a college couple having consenting sex to date rape. So Gossip focuses on the misinformation impact of the gossipers and the gossipees. The subject is timely, too, since date rape is the polarized college debating point on campuses across North America.
A few trends ago, this made-to-order teen melodrama would have been perfect for the Brat Pack troupe of Rob Lowe, Andrew McCarthy, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald and Demi Moore. Those guys would have to play the teachers, not the students these days, so Gossip shows off the Brat Pack 2000.
Leading the way is the Lowe-like handsome hunk James Marsden, who played opposite Katie Holmes in Disturbing Behaviour. He survived that to be featured in Gossip as the conniving leader of the trio who conjures up the yarn.
Less familiar is British actress Lena Headey. She's the smart one in Gossip, confirmed by the fact she wears glasses, an acting device Demi Moore mastered.
The third wheel is Norman Reedus, who portrays the misunderstood creative type as though he had studied McCarthy's mumblings in St. Elmo's Fire. Never mind that St. Elmo's Fire director Joel Schumacher is Gossip's executive producer.
Kate Hudson and Joshua Jackson co-star as the couple who suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous speculation.
Hudson is the daughter of Goldie Hawn, but in this picture she comes across more like Courtney Love pretending to be a pouting Ringwald.
Jackson, the Dawson's Creek dude fresh from The Skulls, can't quite over-act the way Judd Nelson used to.
Indeed, the potential for dumbness is huge. But Gossip never lives down to its possibilities. Director Guggenheim, a TV veteran of NYPD Blue and ER, moves events along fast enough to blur see-through holes in the plot.
Screenwriters Gregory Poirier and Theresa Rebeck elevate the drama above and beyond its trivial nature with some decent dialogue and some nifty misdirection.
Helping in the credibility department are Eric Bogosian and Edward James Olmos. Bogosian is the journalism professor who more or less saves the day. Olmos is a suspicious detective called in when things get strange.
Which is what happens with the quasi-clever Gossip at the conclusion. That's when you figure who was doing what to whom, and why, with a cool soundtrack thrown in for good marketing measure.
(This film is rated AA)
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