Protocol

After co-producing and starring in the surprise runaway success Private Benjamin in 1980, Goldie Hawn started a production company with the legendary Hollywood insider, costume designer, and producer Anthea Sylbert to develop projects for herself. The first two of these were the WWII homefront drama Swing Shift and the contemporary political satire Protocol. Of the two, the woefully inferior Protocol was far more successful. Based on a screenplay by Private Benjamin scribes Nancy Meyers and Charles Shyer, Protocol tells the story of a perky, apolitical Washington waitress named Sunny Ann Davis, who saves the visiting Emir of Ohta (Richard Romanus) from an assassination attempt. This launched her on an unexpected career as a diplomat. The members of the president's administration view her role as strictly window dressing that will associate their candidate with this wildly popular everywoman-hero. But of course, they all underestimate Sunny, who takes her job seriously, works hard to be good at it, and whose down-to-earth approach to politics is refreshingly candid and genuine.

The script was heavily written by Buck Henry, who probably attempted to give it some sharper satirical teeth, but the end result is a muddled work of pseudo-feminist, poor-man's-Capra-corn that makes you wish you were watching the movie it shamelessly rips-off—George Cukor's film of Albert Mannheimer's play Born Yesterday, which won the great Judy Holliday a surprise Best Actress Oscar. In addition to Hawn, Sylbert, Henry, Meyers, and Shyer, Protocol boasts a roster of A-list talent, including director Herbert Ross (The Sunshine Boys, The Goodbye Girl, Pennies From Heaven), cinematographer William A. Fraker (Rosemary's Baby, Paint Your Wagon, WarGames), editor Paul Hirsch (Carrie, The Empire Strikes Back, Footloose), composer Basil Poledouris (The Blue Lagoon, Conan the Barbarian, Red Dawn), and a should-be-impressive cast featuring Chris Sarandon, Andre Gregory, Cliff DeYoung, Gail Strickland, Ed Begley Jr., Jean Smart, John Ratzenberger, and both Kenneth Mars and Kenneth McMillan! but all these folks deliver tepid work that's often embarrassing (especially in Gregory's case). Goldie is her usual delightful self, and there are some interesting ideas around the fringes of the lifeless comedy story, but as both a light entertainment, it's flat and dull, and as sociopolitical commentary, it's simplistic and regressive (even for 1984).