Scoop

Scoop, from director Philip Martin, seems to want to be She Said, but fails to spark anywhere near the level of excitement, interest, importance or gravity of that earlier film. While the cast is fine, here, they are stuck in a script that is purely by the numbers, resulting in a somewhat bland and ultimately shallow portrait of a story that deserved much better. While it is not this reviewer’s custom to suggest alternative routes a film might have taken, it occurred to this viewer that by showing the interview, the film loses something. This is despite the interview being the best part of the film.

Billie Piper, best known for her singing career, and roles in Doctor Who and Secret Diary of a Call Girl, is the true lead here, playing Samantha McAlister, a BBC employee whose job it is to find and arrange interviews with those at the forefront of the news. Her current idea? Prince Andrew, the Queen’s second born son, who has been linked to convicted US billionaire pedophile and sex trafficker, Jeffrey Epstein. There are early hints that tension is coming, that drama may be found from her frustrations at work, but each time you think that will happen, she storms out of the office and…nothing comes of it.

Courtesy Netflix

Sometimes she goes to her mother’s house, where her son stays, and there are the expected conversations about responsibility. The film is more on the nose than the skin stretched over the center of one’s face. Piper is dependable in these early scenes, but nothing more, and her scenes with Rufus Sewell, as Prince Andrew, and Gillian Anderson, as interviewer, Emily Maitlis, prove to be some of the few highlights of the film, and not because of her. It is a shame, as the writing really lets down what, for all intents and purposes, is the central character, who becomes just a supporting figure during the most intense sequence. That, of course, is part of the point but it is a point we already get.

It is further a point that the film makes in a way which creates a moment of whining for her, which may cause a disconnect with the material. “fine” you might think to yourself “I can just watch the sparks fly between Sewell and Anderson” and that is true but only to an extent. Again, the film presupposes a lot of knowledge of what took place. If you are not aware of the scandals of Jeffrey Epstein, you would likely need a roadmap to know the ins and outs of the story. Again, the earlier, far superior She Said, managed to avoid this pitfall by having the journalists, you know, do their job and be shown doing it. Here, you only kind of see them do some of their job but mostly they talk about what needs to be done, has been done or should have been done.

Courtesy Netflix

The result is a dud of a movie. There are lots of scenes of people talking, sitting in cars, or in chairs in luxurious rooms, but often in closeup, so it is seldom do you get to watch actors play off one another. The result is a nearly instantly forgettable work. This is not what one would call a bad film, but it does nothing exceptionally well, and nothing it does works as well as it would like to believe it does. There are no triumphal moments. This is a drama that skips a couple of the steps along the dramatic cycle. While Anderson is getting much acclaim-and she is fine, here, I suppose-the best performance is Sewell, as a completely out of touch Andrew, who seems like a fellow that just does not get why the world hates him. His performance is the one where you will forget you are watching an actor. So, in the end, watch this film if you are interested in seeing some good actors try to make lemonade out of grapefruits. Watch She Said if you want to see something meaningful about the reconciliation of past sexual misdeeds.

SCOOP is now streaming on NETFLIX