America's Sweethearts (2001) Reviewed by Eugene Novikov http://www.ultimate-movie.com/
"Word of advice: when you hit formica, stop."
Starring Billy Crystal, John Cusack, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Julia Roberts, Stanley Tucci, Alan Arkin, Christopher Walken. Directed by Joe Roth. Rated PG-13.
America's Sweethearts is what happens when satire gets lazy. We've seen this before, and recently; Scream 3 was plagued by the same demon. It's a twist worthy of O'Henry when a satire becomes exactly what it's satirizing. It can also be interesting, as in Mel Brooks's better films, but in this case it's messy and dull. The film exhibits not a delicious sense of irony, but obtuseness.
Pity, because Joe Roth's romantic comedy/would-be Hollywood spoof hits the exact right note with its opening sequence, a montage of scenes from films starring Eddie Thomas (John Cusack) and Gwen Harrison (Catherine Zeta-Jones), "America's Sweethearts." It's perfect because, though exagerrated, it bears an uncanny resemblance to actual movies, tripe like Sweet November, The Bachelor, etc, etc. The films in the montage were hits, but now the real-life couple has undergone a bitter break-up and the fans are despondent.
Unfortunately, they also have a held-over movie coming out, a time travel drama cleverly entitled "Time Over Time." The director (Christopher Walken), an Oscar-winner, but so eccentric that he purchased the unabomber's shack and uses it as his editing room, is holding his work hostage until the press junket, when he will show it for the first time. It's up to big shot publicist Lee Phillips (Billy Crystal) to get both Eddie and Gwen to the junket and, when there, make the press forget about the fact that they haven't seen the actual movie.
Eddie is now at a phoney-baloney self-help resort somewhere in the mountains, with mystic guru Alan Arkin raising his self-esteem by spouting lines like "life is a cookie." Gwen, who initiated the break-up, is sulking at home with her sister/slave Kiki (Julia Roberts), who has lost a lot of weight. What does her losing weight have to do with the plot? Well, she has to be thin so that Eddie can fall in love with her. Duh.
There's good stuff in the first half of America's Sweethearts, including some good Billy Crystal lines and unexpectedly sharp jabs at the inner workings of Hollywood. Then, it becomes some of the sloppiest big-budget filmmaking I have ever seen. The script is just all over the map, with a tonal shift approximately every other scene. The payoff, which comes when we finally get to see the mystery movie, is a complete failure, a decent idea that the filmmakers ruined, making it far less incisive than they apparently think it is.
At that point, though, the movie isn't terribly concerned about being incisive. It had long degenerated into one of the lame romances it was parodying just 40 minutes earlier, with movie-star Eddie falling in love with regular-gal Kiki. Think Notting Hill, only reversed and much less interesting.
I hate movies that gather an amazing cast and then waste it, intent on giving the audience what they think it wants to see those A-list actors do. I don't particularly care whether John and Julia fall for each other, especially not if the film itself doesn't care. I was hoping for sharp satire and biting wit, but America's Sweethearts starts out well and then wimps out.
Grade: C
Up Next: Planet of the Apes
©2001 Eugene Novikov
===== --Eugene Novikov lordeugene_98@yahoo.com
"Everyone is entitled to his own opinion but not his own facts." (Daniel Patrick Moynihan)
========== X-RAMR-ID: 29163 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 243830 X-RT-TitleID: 1108688 X-RT-SourceID: 610 X-RT-AuthorID: 1577 X-RT-RatingText: C
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