I'll Do Anything

Ever have one of those spooky experiences at the movies where you become convinced that an evil projectionist has spliced two totally different films together? James L. Brooks' new movie, I'll Do Anything, gives you that weird sensation. And no wonder — it started off last year as a musical, but was re cut into a straight comedy after a disastrous test screening. What remains is an erratic, slightly incoherent mix. Parts of I'll Do Anything drag with the dead weight of its confused editing. But when it works, it's brilliant.

Nick Nolte plays an aging actor whose career hasn't been quite successful enough to qualify him for the status of washed-up-has-been. He's still humping his chops through the audition mill in hopes of landing any part he can. All he gets, however, is the dubious honor of driving a megalomaniac producer (Albert Brooks) around town. Presumably, there's the faint possibility that if he drives well enough, he might get the lead in a remake of Mr. Deeds Goes to Town.

What Nolte also lands is custody of his obnoxious six-year-old daughter (Whittni Wright). He hasn't seen the girl in years, but is now stuck with her because his ex-wife (Tracey Ullman) is going up the river due to her romantic involvement with a businessman whose deals were less than legal. Thanks to his wife's departure, he's trying to raise a kid who drives him nuts, especially after she gains a major part in a TV series.

The script for I'll Do Anything rambles, as if director Brooks couldn't decide whether he was making a retread of Terms of Endearment or a film industry version of Broadcast News.

But the Hollywood insider sections of the movie are great. Albert Brooks' yapping, vulgar producer is a hysterically accurate parody of Joel Silver, the manic maestro of such mindless action films as the Lethal Weapon series. Paired with Brooks is Julie Kavner, as his compulsively truthful lover and audience opinion researcher. Her innate honesty is a handicap in both jobs, which results in Kavner (who also does the voice for cartoon character Marge Simpson) getting to deliver some of the funniest lines of any movie in the past several years.

Mix in odd cameos by Rosie O'Donnell, Woody Harrelson and Ian McKellen, and parts of I'll Do Anything begin to resemble an updated version of Day of the Locust. Unfortunately, the other half of the movie could have been retitled Bachelor Stage Mother. The two plots never mesh, and the result plays like a head-on collision between a Mercedes and a Yugo.

But there's so much good material in I'll Do Anything that it's hard to dislike. Half of it's some of the best stuff that James L. Brooks has ever directed — it's the follow-through that backfires.