A Life Through Film #044: Michael
In the final days of '96, John Travolta once again dominated the box office with maybe his most mediocre work yet
Release Date: 12/25/1996
Weeks at Number One: 2
Thanks for reading! This is my ongoing series where I track the evolution of American culture in my life by reviewing every number one film at the weekend box office since I was born in chronological order. If you haven’t already, I highly recommend reading my introduction post here, and be sure to like and share the review if you enjoyed it!
This is it folks. For the past seven months or so, I’ve been documenting the top box office hits of 1996 in chronological order. There have been some major ups, some major downs, and plenty of mediocrity in the middle. Overall though, I’d say that my first full year as a human being offered more good movies than not at the top of the charts. That said, reviewing 36 movies from 1996 has made me eager to celebrate the virtual New Year.
All we have to do is get through one more motion picture and we’ll have a whole new year of cinema to appreciate.
Who’s the star of this week’s movie?
Shit!
Listen, I’m happy that John Travolta got to have a comeback in the mid ‘90s. I think the dude is generally a talented actor, and all quotes from costars and crewmembers paint him as a kind, humble guy who just loves being on film sets making movies. It’s rare that he actually disappears into a role, but I usually can count on him to be at the very least entertaining. But despite a hot streak that continued into the 21st century, he had surprisingly questionable taste in projects post Pulp Fiction [5/5].
Travolta’s early appearance in this column, Get Shorty, marked the first mediocre review I ever published, and follow-up action flick Broken Arrow was so ideologically empty that its thematic hollowness still keeps me up at night months after I first watched it. So far, Travolta has failed to impress me with his comeback work, leading to my worry whenever I see one of his movies on my list.
People were so excited by him at this point though. The reasoning behind Travolta’s box office drawing power remains the most interesting thing to me about his career at this time.
Maybe he served as living proof that cultural touchstones from the Cold War could not only survive the fall of the USSR, but remain strong points of national pride (minus the Scientology in this case, of course). In fact, it’s a bit of a fluke that we didn’t get a third 1996 movie starring John Travolta as the featured film of this column. Phenomenon came out at the height of summer and made over $100 million domestically, but it never topped the box office because for weeks it was stonewalled by the domination of Independence Day.
But summer has long passed. Now we return to the multiplex at the end of 1996. It’s Christmas time, and the family is heading to the movies in a joyous mood. Maybe the teenagers will peel off to go watch Beavis and Butt-Head or Scream [3.5/5], but their folks will want something a little classier, a little more thoughtful, and maybe even starring an actor they like from prior decades. But shucks, they’ve already seen Jerry Maguire like twice at this point.
Never fear! John Travolta to the rescue!
Michael is a romantic comedy (I guess?) starring Travolta alongside Andie MacDowell, William Hurt, and Bob Hoskins. Our main man plays the archangel Michael, who has taken a sabbatical of sorts from his holy work at a motel in Iowa. Our other characters play reporters from the National Mirror, a fictional tabloid similar to Weekly World News in its taste in supernatural stories of questionable authenticity. They agree to take Michael back with them to Chicago via a road trip across the American Midwest, with plenty of stops at roadside attractions and local curios along the way.
The most interesting creative attached to Michael (besides Travolta) is its writer and director. Nora Ephron would be a legend of the romantic comedy game even if she had retired at the dawn of the ‘90s, simply for the fact that she wrote When Harry Met Sally. The perfection of that movie goes beyond its script, but Rob Reiner’s beautiful direction and the cast’s pitch perfect chemistry wouldn’t mean anything without Ephron’s pen. When Harry Met Sally will make you believe in true love, New York City, and romcoms in equal measure. It’s without a doubt one of my favorite movies of all time [a 5/5, of course].
Ephron didn’t start out by writing all-time great movies though. From Beverly Hills by way of Manhattan, she was originally a journalist for papers like the New York Post and magazines like Newsweek and Esquire. Ephron’s column work was more slice of life than the investigative pieces of fellow journalist-turned-screenwriter Joan Didion, focusing more on the comedic side of food, romance, and city living.
In 1975, Nora met Carl Bernstein, the Washington Post reporter who was one half of the duo that broke open the Watergate story, and shortly thereafter married him. The couple worked together on an early script for Watergate drama All The President’s Men, a screenplay that suspiciously painted Bernstein as a super cool dude who had lots of sex and worked with a total dork named Bob Woodward. Believe it or not, the studio went in a different direction, but Ephron loved what she tasted of screenwriting.
After some time writing for TV comedies in the late ‘70s, the now former journalist was asked by her friend Mike Nichols to help him pen the script for his 1983 movie Silkwood, followed by more work writing his 1986 romantic dramedy Heartburn. Ephron loosely based that one, which followed the collapse of a marriage between Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep after his infidelity, on her own divorce from Bernstein, who had cheated on her at the start of the ‘80s.
Heartburn is something of a forgotten hit (as evidenced by the only trailer for it being uploaded to YouTube 15 years ago), and a good one at that. It stars a great cast even beyond its famous leads, and Nichols is a legendary director for a reason. Dude knows how to stage both comedy and melodrama for maximum effect thanks to his long history in theater. Critics at the time slammed Heartburn for being too aimless and unsatisfying, but I watched it for the first time recently and quite liked it [4/5]. Audiences turned out for the movie, leading to a successful box office pull that would have brought it to the top of the charts if not for megahit Aliens [4.5/5] blocking its path.
After the commercial success of Heartburn in ‘86 and then When Harry Met Sally in ‘89, Ephron decided that it was time to take the next step as a cinematic creative, moving from the typewriter to the director’s chair. Her 1992 directorial debut, This is My Life, was a box office bomb that I’ve never heard of, but her next movie made a bit more noise.
Sleepless in Seattle caught a lot of flack from the macho TV I was watching in my youth for being a quintessential romcom for women, and therefore not deserving of my respect. But coming to it as an adult, I found that it’s one of the more charming cinematic romances I’ve ever watched. The winding will-they-won’t-they that ties Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks together when combined with the movie’s varied, beautiful urban settings leads to an almost overwhelmingly cozy vibe, perfect for autumn nights when the couch feels just a little too empty [it’s a 3.5/5].
Sleepless in Seattle ended up being Ephron’s big break as a director. The movie made almost $250 million at the box office, the kind of figure that modern romcoms couldn’t even fantasize about. The star power certainly helped, but I think audiences connected to it for the simple reason that Ephron was able to write wonderfully layered movie romances. What binds Heartburn, When Harry Met Sally, and Sleepless in Seattle is a nuanced take on love and romance that gets at the truth of a healthy relationship: that shit is hard!
Ephron’s romantic leads are more than their quest for love. Even if they’re written to meet their perfect counterpart, they have their own hang-ups, traumas, and misconceptions about themselves and those around them keeping them from their happy ending. Lesser romcoms will give the central romance one collective personality quirk or wacky external actor to have to work through before we get the feel-good ending we know is coming.1
Ephron’s more classic films force their characters towards and away from one another as different personality traits evolve and conflict. It could all be so bitter and sad, but thankfully she also knows how to write great comedy as well. It’s a small scene, but the bit in When Harry Met Sally where they do brief Oklahoma! karaoke kills me every time2. [The 1955 film adaptation of Oklahoma! is great by the way. 4/5]
These have been a lot of words about Nora Ephron’s work pre-Michael. I must admit a couple of things to you, dear reader. There isn’t a lot of easily accessible information about the making of this movie anymore, meaning that I’m forced to jump into my review of it far earlier than usual. And that means that as much as I’d like to talk about better Ephron movies, I’m forced to discuss Michael, a far cry from what I’m used to with her projects.
Let’s circle back to the premise of the movie: the archangel Michael decides to have a break from life in Heaven and spends some time in Iowa. In contrast to the Heavenly Host we’re used to in our depiction of angels, this Michael is a laidback chainsmoker who loves junk food and getting laid.
This opens up a whole scripture’s worth of theological questions for the curious viewer: what’s Heaven like if Michael is so enamored with Midwest roadside attractions like the world’s largest ball of yarn? Is he engaging in sin by indulging in earthly pleasures, or is God chiller with casual sex and light gluttony than we’ve been led to believe? Are other lesser angels able to take excursions down to Earth, or is it a privilege of the high-ranking archangels?
The most important question is why would one of the most prominent celestial figures in Christian lore be so interested in the romance between two tabloid journalists from Chicago? Michael the movie does a poor job of explaining why Michael the character has this personal investment in people he’s never met before the start of the film.
MacDowell and Hurt lack the distinct personalities that romcom leads need, to the point where I didn’t even realize that the movie viewed Hurt’s character as co-protagonist until Michael was nearly over. Their chemistry suffers as a result; when they hook up towards the end of the second act, I thought it was a random dalliance of convenience, not a true love match that had been building throughout the preceding film.
How could I fail to realize that I was watching a movie centered on the romance between two main characters? I thought Nora Ephron was the queen of this thing?
Easy. Michael isn’t interested in anything except for its title character and biggest star.
Can you believe that John Travolta doesn’t show up in this movie until 15 minutes have elapsed? Michael has no real arc, doesn’t do much to endear himself to the other central characters for much of the movie, and remains frustratingly vague about what his deal as an angel even is. And yet the movie and its marketing are single-minded in their focus. This is the Travolta show, down to the weird poster and lack of development for other characters. Everything about the craft of Michael points to him as the main character, but he’s no more the protagonist of this movie than Doctor Moreau is in The Island of Doctor Moreau.
Both the character of Michael and John Travolta playing him are attractions. Michael is less a real figure and more a vessel for off kilter situations, like when he beds a local judge to get out of starting a massive bar fight, or his childlike wonder at the World’s Largest Nonstick Frying Pan. His angel abilities are underexplained because they need to be flexible enough for him to do everything the script needs him to do, from smelling like baked goods when he’s in heat (don’t ask) all the way up to resurrecting a dead dog, the movie’s biggest and most obvious swing for melodrama.
This underdefined, gimmicky character gives Travolta little to do beyond the same dully charming shtick that everyone at the time wanted from him, leading to the weakest performance from the actor that this column has yet seen. He’s blandly blithe, yet never finds himself in a moment of weakness. After all, when an angel is already enjoying the earthly pleasures of the flesh, why bother teasing temptation?
I know that this isn’t a bad performance from Travolta; his later work would prove to define that word. But this is lacking even compared to his relatively concurrent work. There’s none of the fun character work from Get Shorty or especially Broken Arrow, where the actor’s villainous bravado was the best part of the movie. In Michael, it just feels like John Travolta having a bit of loose fun while wearing some shitty angel wings.
The other performers don’t do much to pick up the slack. William Hurt does fine I guess, but his character only gets flashes of depth before they disappear again in favor of seeing what Michael will do next. I wish I could say the same about Andie MacDowell, an actress who I have come to realize I don’t enjoy seeing. I have yet to enjoy one of her performances in any movie from this era that I’ve gone back and seen. The worst part of both Groundhog Day [4/5] and Four Weddings and a Funeral [3.5/5] doesn’t have the charm of a Meg Ryan or the emotive force of a Meryl Streep, leading to the weakest frontwoman I’ve seen in a Nora Ephron picture.
MacDowell was more focused on raising her three kids at the time (including future nepo baby actress Margaret Qualley), so maybe she was exhausted and did the bare minimum to secure the bag for her family. Who cares, right? Everyone’s coming to see John Travolta anyway!
There’s no singular element of Michael that’s truly abysmal, but it lacks any emotional, thematic, or narrative oomph. This is a roadtrip movie but the characters are weak and the setting is constantly the fields of the Midwest, limiting the fun, dynamic set pieces you might expect from one of those journeys. The third act twists itself into that of an actual romcom as though to fool us into thinking we were watching one all along. I never cared about anything I saw on screen, despite competent technical execution throughout.
How could this happen? Nora Ephron has written some of the most charming movie romances of all time. How did Michael end up so devoid of personality or fun?
Personally, I think the writer/director was just wanting to get back into the public’s good graces. Her 1994 followup to Sleepless in Seattle was Mixed Nuts, a movie that made no money and received abysmal reviews, despite a strong cast led by Steve Martin and Madeline Kahn.
In a 2019 interview, Macdowell remembered Ephron on the set of Michael as a stern director, a woman who seemingly felt the need to lean into her masculine side in order to be taken seriously as a creative. It’s sad, but I’m sure Ephron knew that female directors were and still are examined under a much more intense microscope than their male counterparts. Some men direct one good movie and then spend the rest of their careers making mediocre blockbusters that barely make any money. Meanwhile, if a token woman behind the camera screws up the studio’s bottom line once, there’s a real shot she could be put on ice indefinitely.
I don’t have proof that Ephron took the job making Michael just to make guaranteed money; after all, she did write the script with her sister Delia, indicating some personal passion at least. But casting John Travolta in 1996 was a guarantee that the movie would make money. So was its subject matter.
Only a couple of years after the release of Michael, the New York Times reported bookstores were filling shelves upon shelves with New Age tomes about supposed real life angel encounters. This was also around the same time as the initial publication run of the Left Behind books, which focused on a hypothetical Rapture affecting modern America. There was clearly a big interest in Christian iconography at this time, but why?
A Collider article from 2023 outlined a whole wave of American movies obsessed with angels and demons from around the late ‘90s, though admittedly the heyday of this was closer to 1998 than ‘96.3 I don’t fully agree with every point that Jacob Slankard, who wrote the Collider piece, makes, but I like his central thesis. The ‘90s were a time of great change, both geopolitically and technologically. These same circumstances that led to generational teenage boredom also led to adult anxieties about the future, especially as Y2k approached.
Movies like Michael used Christian imagery but made no effort to push dogma onto the people watching. Instead, general audiences could project their outside anxieties onto the image of John Travolta wearing wings and bringing a dog back to life and use their own revelations to fill in the philosophical gaps of the film.
But what if I don’t participate in that exchange? What if I know that the turmoil of the modern age can’t be explained away by a John Travolta movie?
I’m left with is a movie that has the imagery of big ideas but none of the content to back it up. Its central human characters are tabloid reporters, yet Michael has nothing to say about journalism as a field, surprising given Ephron’s background. Its central premise is intrinsically tied to Christianity, but it fails to bring up any theological point besides “love is good.” Even its Midwest setting, steeped in the trappings of classic Americana, doesn’t feel like a commentary on American culture. Michael gives the appearance of a vibes-movie, but asks me to supply all the cool underlying ideas of something like Dazed & Confused [4.5/5].
I’m just the guy watching you, Michael; bringing something interesting to say was your job!
Critics at the time also weren’t buying it. Michael holds a 37% on Rotten Tomatoes, by far the worst tracking Travolta film I’ve looked at so far. Mick LaSalle from the San Francisco Chronicle nearly fell asleep as he watched it, and called the final product “about nothing except John Travolta.” Emmanuel Levy at Variety called the narrative of the film “rough” and gave it the backhanded compliment that it will probably do great on home video.
This is the general sentiment of most other reviews, but weirdly enough Roger Ebert went to bat for Michael. He gave it 3 out 4 stars, but since Ebert was a journalist in Chicago at the time, I’m willing to call it personal bias.
Michael’s Christian imagery and winter setting allowed it to capitalize on its Christmas release, while its PG rating and sensible concept meant that entire families could go see it after opening presents and stuffing their faces with dinner. Personally, my family usually opted for actually good movies for our Christmas Day trips to the movie theater, but to each their own. Kids will like the dog that’s along for the ride, parents will get to process their own anxieties about the ‘90s.
The two weeks that Michael spent at the top of the box office were the last of 1996 and the first of 1997, meaning that I get to factor it into my eventual ranking of that year’s box office toppers. The movie had basically no competition, only fielding a challenge from the weeks-old Jerry Maguire on both of its weekends on top. As the dump months of ‘97 began in proper two weeks into January, Michael slipped from the top spot but lingered for a shockingly long time. It stayed in the top 10 of the box office charts for the entire month of January and didn’t leave theaters until May. Its final domestic gross of $95 million is, frankly, shocking and upsetting.
A weak international release pushed the final gross to $119 million, meaning that this extremely mid movie I’d never heard of was a bigger box office success than 1996 touchstones like Space Jam and Romeo + Juliet.
If Michael has a legacy, it’s confusion. I had a lot of fun perusing the Letterboxd reviews for this movie, most of which seem to be written by people slightly older than me who are baffled that their parents were so obsessed with it. It’s funny that in the years since Michael was released, there’s yet to be a big backlash to a prominent Scientologist like Travolta playing such a central Christian figure. I don’t think anyone has ever cared enough. If you can believe it, John Travolta will be back in this column again.
Meanwhile, Nora Ephron had made another hit. It took capitalizing on the star of the moment and not really saying much of anything in her script, but she did it. She was now a proven hitmaker, someone who could be trusted to turn out money making, crowd pleasing romcoms. She’ll be back in this column again, but sadly only one more time.
Ephron tragically passed away from cancer in 2012. In a lengthy obituary published in The Guardian, her career and life are recapped in loving homage, with special focus dedicated to her many classic films.
Despite making almost $100 million in the United States alone, Michael isn’t mentioned once.
Rating: 2/5
Next Week: 1996 is done! Before we move to the mysterious year of 1997, I’d like to take a week to rank the 36 films from ‘96 that we’ve looked at in the column. The high highs, low lows, and creamy middles, all will be represented.
See you then!
-Will
Example: You ever see Made of Honor with Patrick Dempsey? That whole movie is predicated on him being unable to be with Michelle Monaghan because he can’t work up the courage to take the risk of telling her he loves her. Not because he doesn’t believe he’s worthy of love or his own history with women, but he’s doesn’t want to alter their friendship. That’s it! 2/5
The best part about it is that Harry not only already knows all the lyrics, but is confident enough in his memory of them that he can do theatrics while he sings them. Meanwhile, Sally has to stick to the book. It’s a clever inversion of the gendered expectation of who a theater person might be, and retroactively explains all of Harry’s manic, performative energy. God, great movie! Can I just write about When Harry Met Sally instead? Would you guys be mad about that?
This isn’t to say I think Michael kickstarted this wave. The true flashpoint was likely City of Angels with Nicholas Cage and Meg Ryan, which will one day be the subject of this column