ISN'T SHE GREAT A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 2000 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): * 1/2
Andrew Bergman (STRIPTEASE) rolls out the treacle trucks in ISN'T SHE GREAT, a story based on the life of Jacqueline Susann ("The Valley of the Dolls"). Giving her life a bizarrely saccharine, Ozzie-and-Harriet gloss, Bergman turns the queen of sleaze into a literary heroine. And he makes her life so excessively cute and over-the-top fun that you may gag. At any minute you expect the cast to stop and ask the audience "Is everybody happy?"
Starring Bette Midler, as Jacqueline Susann, and Nathan Lane, as her husband and agent, Irving Mansfield, the movie, thanks to Bergman's overdirection, manages to bring out the most annoying parts of each actor. Although the movie is short, you'll find yourself secretly hoping for the obviously fatal conclusion -- Susann is diagnosed early in the picture with cancer -- to occur much sooner than it does.
Filmed by Karl Walter Lindenlaub with bright, peppy colors and scored by Burt Bacharach for maximum cloyingness, the film doesn't have a subtle moment. Although Jacqueline wrote about a world of sex and drugs, the movie provides no background on this. In the picture, Jacqueline acts like a woman who sometimes talks dirty but who doesn't have any sins, save her tacky wardrobes. She does sometime speak harshly to God, who appears as the sunlight that filters through a Central Park tree.
As Jacqueline's lap dog of a husband, Nathan Lane plays obsequiousness to the hilt. During her fake suicide episode, he walks into the lake to save her before she drowns. He stops first, of course, to slowly take off his shoes and sox and roll up his pants' legs.
The only saving graces in the movie are two of the supporting cast, to whom writer Paul Rudnick (IN & OUT) gives some of the few lines with any possibilities. Stockard Channing, as Jacqueline's smart-mouthed friend Flo, likes to tell it like it is. When Irving suggests a book to Jacqueline as the salvation for her sagging acting career, Flo, not realizing that he means writing, tells him how stupid his idea is. "Oh come on, Irving," Flo says, "reading never solved anything."
As her anal-retentive, Brooks-Brothers-dressed editor, Michael, David Hyde Pierce gives a prissy performance that's cute at first, but it's a one joke idea. His slow transformation out of his regimented life is as predictable as the rest of the story.
"Talent isn't everything," Flo says. And the mere collection of a talented cast does not ensure that the movie can demonstrate any. ISN'T SHE GREAT was probably a bad idea from the beginning, and nothing in this movie convinces us otherwise.
ISN'T SHE GREAT runs 1:30. It is rated R for language and would be acceptable for teenagers.
Email: Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com Web: http://www.InternetReviews.com
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