Directed by Joe Roth
Written by Billy Crystal and Peter Tolan
Starring Julia Roberts, Billy Crystal, Catherine Zeta-Jones, John Cusack
USA, 2001
AMERICA’S SWEETHEART
What’s worse than a popcorn movie you expect to be a disposable hoot that ends up sorely disappointing because it fails to deliver? Julia Roberts, the main attraction of America’s Sweethearts, is the greatest star we have (she was named so in a Time magazine feature); her charm is old-fashioned but she’s Lombard and Colbert after women’s lib. Do we have a more thoroughly enjoyable persona in movies today, besides, perhaps, Sandra Bullock? Tom Hanks is a good actor but he’s so ordinary, and at his worst, he’s dull like Henry Fonda or Spencer Tracy. Julia is a woman to adore; she’s a heavenly image to look up to, but you also get that incredible feeling of identifying with her and thinking she’s the coolest girl in the world. She’s a jovial, radiant comedienne; it’s hard not to look stupid in front of the camera, so when I hear critical backlash against Miss Roberts, I’m bewildered, even angry, because she uses her time on the screen to full effect, to create a delicious, unstoppable image, and to stun us with her perfect timing into saying “You go, girl!”
America’s Sweethearts, co-written by Billy Crystal, is less funny than his jokes for the Academy Award ceremonies. It’s a Singin’ in the Rain throwback about a famous Hollywood couple (John Cusack and Catherine Zeta-Jones) who break up and are forced to attend a press junket for their final film together. Roberts, the top-billed performer, fits somewhere in there, but she’s not around enough. Don’t these hack filmmakers know that the only safe way to make a movie with this toothy, infectious presence is to put her in almost every scene? Steven Soderbergh knew that. You miss her when she’s not around, and her character here is so underwritten it qualifies as a supporting role. Julia doesn’t work in bit parts. Zeta-Jones is a Garbo-wannabe and she’s just beautiful enough to pull it off; her projected haughtiness is usually pitch-perfect and proves that she’s decent at comedy. Cusack, a very good actor, generates no chemistry with Roberts, who plays Zeta-Jones’ sister and assistant and his sister-in-law and love interest. Maybe it’s just that the script doesn’t allow the relationship to gain momentum and to grow. The only sex scene involving Julia and John is implied; it’s a yawn and a shrug- we know what happened so the film moves on. Director Joe Roth doesn’t build romantic suspense; he fast-forwards to the climax, which turns out to be rather anti-climactic.
Everything here recycles material that’s better; we not only get the Hollywood satire from the greatest musical ever made, the romantic setup from the Astaire-Rogers movies, and the style of humor from the screwball comedies, but the scene in which Cusack and Roberts are in bed together reminded me of the morning-after moments in the far more consistent Julia vehicle Notting Hill. Most of the jokes are cheap, even Christopher Walken’s auteur filmmaker named Hal (an obvious reference to Stanley Kubrick) who delivers his movie to the junket in a helicopter after holding it hostage and putting the studios in a state of panic (it’s a nice, spoofy take on reclusive, arty directors who take for granted the companies that fund their work- and another indication that this is a studio concoction made with the talent and bitterness of executives). It’s strange that Crystal and the other screenwriter Peter Tolan should be making fun of moviemaking misfits when their own material is so disappointingly, nauseatingly hollow. So much of America’s Sweethearts is filler, like Hank Azaria’s well-meaning turn as a dumb Spanish actor with a heavy accent, that the amusing Walken and Stanley Tucci performances seem poisoned by the barrel’s bad apples.
The film’s opening title is placed on a red, sophisticated leather book like the credits were in Vincente Minnelli movies, and the book opens up to show us clips from early collaborations of the superstar duo. They are purposely crumby and campy, like Singin’ in the Rain’s silent film imitations, yet the movies-within-a-movie at least look interesting; I’d rather watch those instead of this confused crap. Hollywood seems to think that the only way they can keep vomiting up predictable love stories and have us accept them is if they wax self-deprecating, but Roth’s tone is so see-through, so repellent. Julia Roberts doesn’t deserve this. She does the best she can with the skinny role she’s given. She’s one of our last links to the stars of the studio system; she absolutely deserved her Oscar for Erin Brockovich because the Academy is all for fun, attractive performances, not real great acting, and Julia’s Brockovich suffered gloriously and glamorously. She deserves to be one of the most powerful figures in Hollywood right now. And she is.
By Andrew Chan [JULY 21, 2001]