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Must Go!
Avg. Critic Score: 84 out of 100 Universal acclaim Metascore® based on all critic reviews
Information for Parents:
15 Iffy for 15+
Read Common Sense Media review

Critic scores range from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating more favorable reviews.

  • 100
    Boston Globe |

    Broadcast News grows in your memory. It recalls an era when movies were made by, for and with three-dimensional characters you cared about. Let's hope it doesn't take James L. Brooks another four years to make another one. We can't wait that long. [25 Dec 1987, p.53] Read full review

  • 100
    Chicago Sun-Times | Roger Ebert

    Broadcast News has a lot of interesting things to say about television. But the thing it does best is look into a certain kind of personality and a certain kind of relationship. Read full review

  • 90
    Wall Street Journal | Julie Salamon

    The dialogue in "Broadcast News" is so quick and clever I wanted to see the movie again the minute it ended because I knew I couldn't have possibly caught it all. I caught most of it though, and certainly enough to know that this is one terrific movie. [15 Dec 1987, p.1] Read full review

  • 90
    Variety |

    Enormously entertaining, Broadcast News is an inside look at the personal and professional lives of three TV journlists. Read full review

  • 90
    Los Angeles Times | Sheila Benson

    Broadcast News is so diabolically clever that you rather expect it to be heartless, in the way that so much surface cleverness can be. No such thing. Heartless is the wrong word for this movie: It's insightful and understanding and marvelous fun, while giving up none of its thoughtfulness. [16 Dec 1987, p.1] Read full review

  • 88
    San Francisco Chronicle |

    Love has become a tired movie theme, but rarely is it relegated to a subplot as it is in Broadcast News. That's just one of the reasons that makes James Brooks' ingenious film a different sort of movie. Another is how it subtly reveals the complex mingling of work lives and love lives, showing how they feed each other and, indeed, feed off each other, careers devouring entire relationships in hungry 30-second sound bites. [10 Jan 1988, p.17] Read full review

  • 88
    USA Today | Mike Clark

    News is right, completely right, until it slips just a bit at the end.By that time it hardly matters because you've seen the best of the holiday films, as well as the most all-around entertaining movie of 1987 - a bittersweet media comedy-drama that surpasses its potential. [16 Dec 1987, p.1D] Read full review

  • 80
    Washington Post | Hal Hinson

    As it turns out, big secrets aren't revealed in Broadcast News, but the film is so ingratiatingly high-spirited, and the performances so full of sass and vigor, that in the long run it doesn't really matter much. Read full review

  • 80
    Washington Post |

    Director Brooks masterfully interconnects this human triangle with the breakneck world of broadcasting -- the professional frenzy behind the news. He shifts the mood from romantic to farcical, the comedy from broad to subtle. Read full review

  • 80
    The New York Times | Vincent Canby

    Mr. Brooks's screenplay overstates matters both at the beginning of the film and at the end, with a prologue that strains to be cute and an epilogue that is just unnecessary. In between, however, the movie is a sarcastic and carefully detailed picture of a world Mr. Brooks finds fascinating and also a little scary. Read full review


Information for Parents
Common Sense Media says Iffy for 15+ Witty TV newsroom tale for mature comedy fans.
What Parents Need to Know Parents need to know that this movie is heavy on dialogue and "grown-up" humor and a better choice for mature teens and up. Characters discuss journalistic ethics and pose occasionally existential questions about life, careers, love, and success. Sexual content includes rear male nudity and a discussion of date rape for a news story. Violence is mild with some background shooting during one journalist's field report. Characters are realistically flawed and self-absorbed, but work together in a supportive way.
  • Families can talk about whether this is an accurate depiction of TV journalism. Why does Jane get so upset when she learns Tom faked crying during a report? Do you think this type of reporting is more or less common today? Why does Jane, a producer with strong ideals, struggle with her attraction to Tom? Why is it hard for these characters to have "normal" personal lives? How do their personalities make them suited for this type of work?
The good stuff
  • message true0 Positive messages: After he gets beaten up in a schoolyard, a boy has a bloody mouth. Shooting erupts while a news crew reports on a rebel army in a Central American jungle. The news bureau does a special report on a Libyan plane that shot at an American base in Sicily.
What to watch for
  • violence false0 Violence: After he gets beaten up in a schoolyard, a boy has a bloody mouth. Shooting erupts while a news crew reports on a rebel army in a Central American jungle. The news bureau does a special report on a Libyan plane that shot at an American base in Sicily.
  • sex false3 Sex: A couple is shown in the bedroom after sex with a brief rear shot of the man. The shadow his erection makes on the wall is played for laughs. A man compares working with a woman to "great sex." Some propositions, kissing, and fondling, and plenty of sexual tension. A woman slips a package of condoms in her purse before going out for the night. A TV reporter covers a story on date rape; he interviews a victim who describes an attack.
  • language false3 Language: Some profanity, including "f--k," "damn," "ass," "hell," "asshole," "prick," "bastard," "goddamnit."
  • consumerism false0 Consumerism: Not an issue
  • drugsalcoholtobacco false3 Drinking, drugs and smoking: Characters are shown drinking beer, wine, and cocktails. One character gets drunk in his home on "screwdrivers." A woman asks her date if he's OK to drive after they leave a restaurant; the scene implies that he has been drinking.

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