ISN'T SHE GREAT
Reviewed by Harvey Karten, Ph.D. Universal Pictures Director: Andrew Bergman Writer: Paul Rudnick Cast: Bette Midler, Nathan Lane, Stockard Channing, David Hyde Pierce, John Cleese
If you read the vibrantly masculine stories of Ernest Hemingway, you're not surprised to find out that the author is as macho as his novels. Does it logically follow that the writer of trashy, soap-opera accounts of Hollywoods stars, heir drug habits, their promiscuity and their suicidal tendencies would herself be a woman who is not only vulgar but who celebrates her style of life? It does if you go along with Paul Rudnick's concept of Jacqueline Susann, who wanted fame more than anything else in life and whose "Valley of the Dolls" put her squarely on the map. Rudnick's Susann, while somewhat fictionalized for dramatic effect on the screen, is a woman of unbounded ambition, forceful charm and limitless determination to make a name for herself by following the standard advice to authors--write what you know. And what she knew best was the sort of chatter that captivated women in the ladies' rooms of public places throughout the nation but which had not been written about in quite the gloriously trashy way that Susann made popular.
The movie, directed by Andrew Bergman ("Honeymoon in Vegas," "The Freshman") from an article written in The New Yorker magazine by Michael Korda shows Jackie to be anything but a cloistered librarian with a vivid imagination. The outrageous Bette Midler performs the role with a hair style that might have done well in the L.A. competition featured in Kevin Allen's "The Big Tease" (which opened during the same weekend), decked out with delightfully uncouth clothing, and best of all with a non-stop array of one- liners. With Nathan Lane as her publicist, agent, and husband, Irving Mansfield, you'd expect the gags to flow, and they do. Then again, you can get that on any solid TV sitcom week after week as the enduring "Cheers" pointed out so well. What's missing is a sense of proportion. Susann's vulgarity is amicably on display. But Paul Rudnick, one of the funniest writers of the decade--whose "Jeffrey" tells the poignant and hilarious tale of a gay male in New York who swears off sex but winds up in a series of affairs with unlikely people--seems intent on making her a saint.
Susann, dedicated to her autistic son whom she has reluctantly placed in an expensive home, and given to talking to God while facing the sun between the branches of Central Park trees, is not really satirized in this movie. As a substitute, director Bergman throws the story across the screen in the garish colors of the films of the fifties decade, colors which you'd expect from a John Waters movie but which simply reinforce the idea that crackling jokes aside, "Isn't She Great" is mostly a lavish, full-screen sitcom.
Not that this is bad--just that we should expect more of Rudnick. The laughs do come frequently, as when Jackie meets Irving at a downscale restaurant, goes with him to a more extravagant eatery, and finds out that Mansfield impresses her by comments like "Do you know Perry Como? I handle his brother." The best line comes from Jackie's friend Florence, played by the versatile and always reliable Stockard Channing, who comforts the author with "talent isn't everything." David Hyde Pierce ("Frasier") as Susann's editor, is an ideal foil for the author, described by her accurately as a tightass--a WASP who orders an American cheese sandwich with mayo in a Jewish deli.
We do get some clues about marketing. Susann's "Valley of the Dolls" did not get to the top simply because it hit an automatic high note with the public. To get the novel stationed in the best locations of bookstores throughout the country, Susann, her husband and her adorable black poodle do a cross-nation tour (like John Steinbeck with a similar dog in "Travels With Charlie)," shmooze with the owners of even the smallest emporium after having learned their names in advance, and make sure that the flamboyantly decorated tome is placed on eye level in the optimum spots.
Since Susann died of breast cancer in 1974, Bergman milks the hospital scene with both poignancy and good humor, showing an author who is a shadow of her former self but who has never lost her sense of consummate vulgarity or taken on the snobbish attributes of people who rise from nothingness to the heights of celebrity. What Bergman has given us is an entertaining biopic of people who seem always to be aware that the studio cameras are on them and who are playing to the crowd more than interacting with one another.
Rated R. Running Time: 95 minutes. (C) 2000 by Harvey Karten, film_critic@compuserve.com
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