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AMERICA'S SWEETHEARTS
Director: Joe Roth Cast: Julia Roberts, Billy Crystal, Catherine Zeta-Jones, John Cusack, Hank Azaria, Stanley Tucci MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:40 Release Date: 7/20/01 |
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Review by Mark Dujsik Like the one the characters of the title are involved in, America’s Sweethearts is an unhappy marriage but of two genres—satire and romantic comedy. Here’s a movie that tries to accomplish both, but the result is an unsuccessful mesh. It’s sweet when it should be mean—mellow when it should be bouncing off the walls. The satirical elements of the movie are its most promising, but the combination crams them into a formula. There have been a lot of movies about how fake Hollywood is, but this is the fake Hollywood movie about how fake Hollywood is. Gwen Harrison and Eddie Thomas (Catherine Zeta-Jones and John Cusack) were the most popular celebrity couple, on-screen and off. But their marriage hit a wall when Gwen started an affair with Hector (Hank Azaria), a Spanish actor. After an incident with a motorcycle (he says, "accident"; she says, "attempted murder"), Eddie is placed in a rehabilitation facility, and since their breakup, Gwen has had a string of box office flops. Their last movie together has been held back (the director is still editing in the Unabomber’s shack, now in his backyard), and the studio’s publicist Lee (Billy Crystal) is given the job to get a press junket together that will concentrate on the couple’s possible reunion and avoid the absence of a movie for screening. Upon arrival, the stars go through the average duties of a press junket, and Lee tries to exploit the couple’s actions. On the sidelines is Gwen’s assistant and sister Kiki (Julia Roberts) who has lost sixty pounds since the breakup. Is it any secret that she has feelings for Eddie? Well, as in any romantic comedy, it’s a secret only to everyone on-screen. There’s a smaller secret that she keeps from Eddie that everyone in the audience will know seconds after it’s hinted at. The whole romance angle of the movie is simple and put on. There’s nothing new or interesting here. It’s obvious that Roberts is not plain, and it’s impossible to care for these characters. Both satire and romantic comedy depend on characters. In satire, there have to be recognizable caricatures. In romantic comedy, there have to be sympathetic characters. The characters here are too fleshed out for broad, satirical humor and too thin for sympathy. The movie wants us to laugh at and feel for these characters at the same time, and it doesn’t work. There are smaller roles that successfully satirize Hollywood. For example, Stanley Tucci plays a studio exec, and his scenes have a strong bite. The director is played by Christopher Walken, and his scenes are amusing. However, they have minor roles compared to Hector. Hector is a one-joke character, and the joke is a pathetic one. He has an accent. It’s simply not funny, and it doesn’t have anything to say about Hollywood. The whole movie has this problem. It sets up targets and never actually tries to mock them. The press junket set-up is a prime example. We know what happens at these things. The studio gives journalists a free vacation with nice perks for one reason—to see and comment on a movie. One of the journalists present sarcastically says, "I can do an interview about a movie I haven’t seen yet." What’s ironic is that they do. Sometimes they even write mini-reviews of movies they haven’t seen yet. The whole movie has this tendency to be nice. That alone defeats the purpose of satire. If you want to make a point, you might have to hurt some feelings along the way. Copyright © 2001 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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(for language, some crude
and sexual humor)
