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AMERICA'S
SWEETHEARTS
1/10
USA
2001 : Joe Roth : 102 mins
America's
Sweethearts is a comedy without laughs, a romance without passion,
a Hollywood satire without wit or bite. Its one redeeming feature, and
the only one, is Catherine Zeta-Jones, who shows a knack for comedy
that shames her co-stars Julia Roberts, John Cusack, Billy Crystal and
director Roth. Not only is Crystal responsible for the woeful script,
he contributes a rotten performance as well, one that largely consists
of waving both hands in front of himself as he babbles on about nothing.
The
rickety plot concerns marries couple Gwen (Zeta-Jones) and Eddie (Cusack),
co-stars in a string of blockbusters. But when their relationship sours,
so does their box-office appeal - the public needs to believe in the pair
on and off screen. With so much studio cash riding on their next
movie, a big-budget sci-fi epic directed by an eccentric recluse (Christopher
Walken), it's up to Hollywood's PR spin-doctor (Crystal) to stop the duo
bickering in time for a pre-release press extravaganza at a fancy Nevada
hotel. His secret weapon is Gwen's sister and personal assistant Kiki
(Roberts), who turns out to have a soft spot for Eddie herself…
It's
a cumbersome enough premise, developed in galumphing fashion by Roth and
Crystal. They're supposedly long-standing Hollywood 'insiders,' but America's
Sweethearts seems to have been knocked together by people with barely
a passing knowledge of how the industry operates. We're unfortunately
much closer to David Mamet's State
and Main than to Altman's The Player, and even Scream
3 looks like a piercing Hollywood hatchet-job in comparison. It's
hard to know who America's Sweethearts is supposed to be for -
the film takes a jaundiced view of 'the public,' and characters harp on
about the impending 'press junket' without ever bothing to explain to
the audience exactly what this means.
But
real Hollywood insiders will be driven to distraction by the endless inaccuracies
and implausibilities.
The whole Gwen-and-Eddie co-star idea is weirdly 1940s, as are their supposed
former 'hits'. There's nothing remotely believable about the new sci-fi
movie, either, right down to the embarrassingly cheap-looking posters.
Walken's crazy director, meanwhile, is an especially desperate manoeuvre
- even if the actor does get to (very briefly) show off his dance moves
once again.
Walken
may be criminally underused, but at least he doesn't embarrass himself:
Alan Arkin and Hank Azaria aren't so fortunate in their cameos as a long-haired
hippy guru and a lisping Latino lover. Zeta-Jones is spot-on as spoiled-bitch
Gwen, but it's very hard to know what to make of Roberts' character Kiki.
There's a lot of fuss made about how much weight she's lost, and we see
her 4 stone heavier in a flashback - as if that was somehow amusing in
itself.
Roth,
meanwhile, resorts to travelogue shots of the Hyatt Hotel in what looks
like an especially crude form of product-placement, and when in doubt
lathers jaunty muzak all over the place to con us into thinking it's all
a terrific lark. Who could possibly have let such a useless director loose
on such a project? The clue is in the question: America's Sweethearts
comes from a new studio called Revolution. The head of Revolution: Joe
Roth.
28th October, 2001
(seen Oct-15-01, Odeon, Newcastle)
For the many
other films as bad as this (and worse) check out our Diorama
of Dishonour
by Neil
Young
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