Films about journalism have had a broad impact, as we have classics like All The President’s Men and Spotlight, and even well-reviewed but slightly less classics like Frost/Nixon and She Said. So I’m sure someone thought that the world really wanted a film about the earth shattering Prince Andrew interview from 2019. Instead of making a broader look at that Epstein scandal, this is laser focused on just how this interview came to be. It’s the kind of minutiae that definitely wasn’t going to rock the box office. but sliding it onto Netflix, and who knows? right?
Much like the aforementioned She Said, Scoop offers a look at the modern journalism, when a news story can break in a tweet, and anyone can upload the kind of footage reporters used to capture from their smartphones. Based on a book, and directed by Philip Martin, Scoop focuses on the relentless pursuit to land the interview. It’s not about having achieved the interview, and then breaking down the event itself, like Frost/Nixon, but the goal of achieving this never before heard interview, and the pressure to land something this big.
Billie Piper is the main journalist pushing for this interview, and through her tenacity, we can feel her drive being put up against ethical considerations, and walking a fine line in making sure that she’s not misrepresenting herself or her company, but with the same knowledge that should she fail, she may fail out of this career. This basically is the film, and ultimately it just isn’t enough.
The film thinks it is fast paced, because it assumes that pacing is reductive to either a directors ability, or just runtime, but because we are watching every little detail play out on something that ultimately leads to just an interview, and that payoff lies outside the film, the film isn’t quite as well paced as it may think.Gillian Anderson does feel somewhat wasted in her supporting role.
Since the film focuses primarily on the chase for the interview itself, it misses out on the larger societal implications, and how the interview truly contributed and affected the perception of not just the Epstein trial, but also the ramifications for the royal family and importantly Prince Andrew. The interview had such huge implications, I don’t know why the movie is 974% getting to the interview, and 3% everything else.
1The audio description here does have to contend with a script full of dialogue, a modern setting, and fairly generic characters. but, it does ultimately a thankless job,.
It’s not that scoop is bad, it’s that films have done this better. This is just Netflix’s attempt to do the same thing, and it isn’t quite as great as it could have been.
Final Grade: B-
