Ernie Souchak (John Belushi) is a very powerful and cocky Chicago journalist. When Ernie is on the hunt for exploiting the city’s councilman, some of the police officers in the city beat up Ernie for getting too close. to exploit him, as well as… his apartment exploding due to blow back from the councilman.
His editor in chief tells him to take some time off of being a scoop journalist and to go do something more relaxing, like to go west and interview a bald eagle scientist, Nell Porter (Blair Brown). Thus, a romance strikes up between the both of them after the few months that Ernie has been up there.
Ernie is then told to come back after the heat has died down, and Ernie is now back with politics but is leaving his true love behind, will true love find itself again?
This, in my opinion, is John Belushi’s greatest performance because this is the only movie where John is completely sober; nothing is helping him be funny, there is no low brow humor in this film; it is not your average Belushi film considering he had always aspired to be a serious actor, and this shows he could have truly been a great actor, for comedy and drama.
Also, Belushi is really just playing himself in this movie: a guy who’s just a normal human being who is very quiet, and politically outspoken in the film . When and if you see the film, you will truly get a sense of how talented Belushi was. It’s sad to think that he didn’t do more roles like this because this Rom-com is an underappreciated gem. His co-star, Blair Brown, does a great job as a woman who has been living up in the mountains just a bit too long and has to re-learn who to get acquainted with and learn how to be friends with people. The theme of this film is great, of that sometimes people truly lose sight of life when you’re invested in a job. Just when you’re forced to take a deep breath and relax, you learn that you have missed out on a lot of things in life, but it’s not too late.
This movie also has some very good stunt work because this was more of a low-budget film. Belushi did do some of his own stunts, just not all of them in this film. The directing in this film is fantastic with how well the nature shots are and the aerial footage that the director got of the bald eagles flying is outstanding.
It’s a good time for a film! It has romance, comedy, suspense, and drama, but the writing at times falls a little short with certain characters at times, and the pacing is off at some points but overall, I give the film 8.5 as the total; the acting gets 8 gold bars; directing gets 9.5 gold bars; writing gets 8.7 silver bars. I will see you the next time you want to come to the movies.