ERIN BROCKOVICH (Universal/Columbia) Starring: Julia Roberts, Albert Finney, Aaron Eckhart, Marg Helgenberger, Conchata Ferrell, Peter Coyote. Screenplay: Susannah Grant. Producers: Danny DeVito, Michael Shamberg and Stacey Sher. Director: Steven Soderbergh. MPAA Rating: R (profanity, adult themes) Running Time: 133 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
Steven Soderbergh has fashioned one of those careers that movie people always claim they want. He gets to make unconventional, experimental films like KAFKA, SCHIZOPOLIS and THE LIMEY, while still making a few bucks doing "mainstream" films like KING OF THE HILL and OUT OF SIGHT. Yet "mainstream" truly belongs in quotes where Soderbergh is concerned, since his approach to timeworn genres is as unconventional and his conventionally unconventional work. Despite his popularity with the art house set, he has found it difficult to cross over to a broader audience, since he keeps baffling that audience by taking amiable entertainments and putting meat on their bones. You might think you know what to expect from a coming-of-age story or a crime caper, but did you really expect what Soderbergh delivered in KING OF THE HILL and OUT OF SIGHT?
ERIN BROCKOVICH is another film -- a legal crowd-pleaser with a tart-tongued heroine -- that looks like you should know what to expect. Leave it to Soderbergh to make even that kind of you-go-girl Hollywood premise uniquely appealing. Julia Roberts stars as the real-life title character, a twice-divorced single mother of three desperate for a job, any job. She finds one at a small law firm headed by Ed Masry (Albert Finney), where she bulldogs her way into a position doing filing. But Erin stumbles onto something big when she investigates a real estate deal pending in the California desert. It seems that families in the town of Hinkley have been experiencing health problems at an unusual rate, and that the local power company may be trying to hide its responsibility for those problems.
In most films of this kind, you would expect a combination of sassy one-liners and courtroom theatrics. You do get some of the former -- courtesy a solid Susannah Grant script that gives Roberts plenty of no-nonsense dialogue to bite into -- but there's a way Roberts plays a line that keeps the film from degenerating into mundanely rabble-rousing chick flickery. Roberts has her detractors, particularly when it comes to her dramatic performances, yet ERIN BROCKOVICH finds her effectively taming the glamour girl looks into a convincing character. Even when she's snapping off one of Erin's saltier tirades against the lack of recognition she's getting, Roberts never seems to be waiting for a laugh. She does one of the hardest things anyone can do with a character like this: She refuses to play Erin with a wink to the audience so we all know it's Julia Roberts beneath the bitter exterior. She has the guts to play Erin with an equally bitter interior.
You also have to give Soderbergh his share of the credit for knowing how Erin needed to be played, but it's no surprise to find him in control of his material. In keeping with the less-than-sexy title of the film, Soderbergh makes sure the case never overwhelms the character. While the lawsuit against Pacific Gas & Electric makes for compelling drama, it's not as compelling as Erin navigating the path towards self-respect. The story features elements familiar from a hundred legal investigation dramas in the Grisham era -- the nasty corporate monolith, gutsy underdogs, saintly victims, etc. -- but ERIN BROCKOVICH always seems to find an unexpected angle just when it's most necessary. When a PG&E attorney shows up to throw some weight around, it's a youngster who squeaks out his scripted threat in a barely-changed voice; when it's time to announce the verdict, there's not a judge to be seen.
ERIN BROCKOVICH does take its conventional turns, and -- not coincidentally -- that's usually when it starts to meander. Erin's romance with a soft-hearted biker named George (Aaron Eckhart) leads to a trite "you care about your job more than your family" confrontation (think Sissy Spacek's whine in JFK with a little gender role reversal), and there's one moment of precocious sensitivity by Erin's son Matthew (Scotty Leavenworth) that almost makes you want to shudder. Erin's relationship with Masry (wonderfully played by Finney in one of his best performances in 20 years) generates much more kick than any of her at-home relationships, which leads to some sag during the domestic interludes. Still, Soderbergh and Roberts bring too much crackling originality to ERIN BROCKOVICH for its study of character through hard work to suffer too much. I'm not sure Steven Soderbergh's ERIN BROCKOVICH will set audiences to applauding as they leave the theater. That would happen in another director's version, one where the predictable doesn't have a way of turning into the unpredictable.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 uncommon laws: 7.
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