Ok, I didn’t realize Rebecca Hall was a quality actress. Now, please don’t ever give her another starring role. Ever. Not that I didn’t enjoy devoting 99% of a two-hour screening to the world of an unpleasant, unrealistic, depressed and oft sour Doña Quixote, but I didn’t. Yes, Rebecca Hall, you can act; and maybe you can parlay that fact into another quality supporting role.
Christine Chubbuck (R. Hall) was a fairly troubled soul, and not just because of her TV-unfriendly surname. A perfectionist and manic depressive, Christine landed on-air as a special correspondent for the ABC affiliate WXLT-TV news team in Sarasota, Florida. In the mid-1970s, TV news started to change from integral to sensational. Though lacking star-power or ratings to demand such, Christine often lobbied, crossing lines to do so, for passive integrity ahead of the new phrase of the day, “if it bleeds, it leads.” Of her background, we only know Christine had “some trouble in Boston.” Hence, I’m left agog at how this works – “hmmm, that woman over there. She’s unfriendly and combative … and she prefers puff pieces on local farmers to stabbing victims. She suffers from depression, is suicidal, and might have been fired from her last job for any of those reasons … let’s put her on the air!”
Guessing standards were different at the time. When Christine isn’t alienating co-workers, she lives in an apartment with her deadbeat mother. It’s unclear whether she lives with mom because mom can’t afford to live alone or if mom is there to even out Christine’s depression. What we do know is this relationship, like almost every other in Christine’s life, is antagonistic pretty much whenever Christine isn’t getting her way 24/7. Christine openly complains of lack-of-boyfriend.
Christine the film is obsessed with Christine the person, gladly chucking plot development, minor characters, or even pop psychology to give us the day-by-day life of a reckless, self-obsessed woman. Any possible good ideas within the film are compromised by this obsession. For instance, twice the action delves into unique forms of exposition – once expressed through the puppets Christine uses to entertain sick children and again as a game response in a one-on-one therapy session. While these are fabulous ways to let the viewer in, they remain a brick wall. For however much we learn, Christine isn’t actually interacting with any named character in these scenes – the film remains 100% about Christine and 0% about the bit players who show up to screw with her life. Bottom line is while this 
portrait might have been honest, I didn’t like Christine, rarely sympathized with her, and wished she spent five minutes actually listening to somebody who wasn’t Christine. Rebecca Hall might have understood this woman perfectly, but remains an actress wanting – nailing performances is about bringing the audience in, not shutting them out.
Weird that the two biggest names here are Rebecca Hall and Michael C. Hall. Weirder still that Christine holds an unrequited torch for George (M.C. Hall).
Chances are excellent that when the words “Christine” and “movies” come together at anytime in the future, the conversants will be talking not about this film, but instead about the 34 year-old John Carpenter interpretation of the Stephen King novel. I swear we just had a film set peripherally against the changing tide of television news from responsible to … not. Oh yes, it was Anchorman 2. Yes, Christine is just like Anchorman 2 without the anchor, camaraderie, or humor. Doesn’t leave much, does it?
♪Yeah, it’s pretty clear, her tea ain’t meant for two
But when she’s workin’, workin’, to the film she’s true
Yeah, she’s got that boom mic aimed at the right faces
Interviewing yucks in agriculture places
I see that magazine, insisting news needs eyes
So she treats her stories like they’re some kind of prize
If you catch taping, taping please make her stop
Cause every inch of her is selfish from the bottom to the top
Because you know it’s all about Christine
‘Bout Christine, no anchor
It’s all about Christine
‘Bout Christine, no local
It’s all about Christine
‘Bout Christine, no weather
It’s all about Christine
‘Bout Christine, ‘bout Christine♫
Rated R, 115 Minutes
D: Antonio Campos
W: Craig Shilowich
Genre: Rebecca Hall’s audition tape
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Divas
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Company folk
♪ Parody inspired by “All About That Bass”
