** (out of ****)
Starring Julia Roberts, Billy Crystal, Catherine Zeta-Jones, John Cusack, Christopher Walken, Seth Green, Hank Azaria, Alan Arkin, and Stanley Tucci
Directed by Joe Roth & written by Billy Crystal and Peter Tolan
2001 PG13
�America�s Sweethearts� is one of those movies that I feel bad for not liking very much. It�s decently acted and competently made, but more than that it�s good-natured. If a movie is smug, mean, or insulting, then slamming it doesn�t feel wrong. But giving �America�s Sweethearts� a negative rating makes me feel like I�m hurting someone�s feelings. The movie isn�t consistently funny and, instead of revealing something new or interesting about Hollywood, it spends a lot of time on a love story that it really doesn�t develop properly. It relies too much on us wanting Julia Roberts to get together with John Cusack, but doesn�t give us much reason why.
Catherine Zeta-Jones and John Cusack star as movie stars, married off-camera and always falling in love on-camera. Their movies are always huge hits, but the couple seems to be on the verge of a divorce. The viewing public is in turmoil and shivers are running up the spine of their studio, which fears that Cusack and Zeta-Jones� next film might flop if they aren�t still a couple. Enter Billy Crystal, a studio crony and friend of the couple, who promises the studio that he shall have the couple reunited in time for the movie�s opening. Crystal really doesn�t believe Cusack and Zeta-Jones will be happy together, and is only interested in them getting back together so the studio can make money.
(What �America�s Sweethearts� wants us to believe is that Crystal has �come to senses� when, near the film�s end, he encourages Cusack to break his wedding vows, leave his wife, and tell the world that divorce is the solution for our marital woes. So maybe the movie isn�t so good-natured after all.)
Trouble is, Zeta-Jones has shacked up with her new lover (Hank Azaria of �The Simpsons,� sporting a wild accent that allows him to say �honket� instead of �junket�). And, apparently, Cusack might be in love with Zeta-Jones� sister and live-in slave named Kiki (Julia Roberts), although this kind of just pops out of nowhere in the last half of the movie. Zeta-Jones and Cusack are both neurotic, self-obsessed messes, and I think the point �America�s Sweethearts� is trying to make is that these glamorized celebrities need to be brought back to the real world now and again. The drama of Zeta-Jones, Cusack, and Roberts plays out at the press junket for their new film, which is held in the middle of the desert so that 1) the newspapermen can�t get word of what�s happening back to the real world, and 2) �America�s Sweethearts� can keep all its characters in one place.
The movie�s casting is a little bit intriguing. As far as I�m concerned, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Julia Roberts were both assembled in the basement of some movie studio. I don�t care how many times they appear on magazine covers, or how often Roberts is described as �the girl next door.� I don�t personally find either of them very attractive because they don�t strike me as real. So casting Zeta-Jones as a movie star is just fine, just like casting her as the murderous dancer in �Chicago� was spot on. But there�s something about Julia Roberts portraying �the normal girl� that�s so weirdly unsettling. Maybe it�s that no �normal girls� are named Kiki. As for John Cusack, after a career of playing an intellectual everyman, he�s also cast against type as a glamorous movie star, and doesn�t seem at home in the role.
If Shakespeare or Billy Wilder were still alive (wait�is Billy Wilder still alive?) they could take this situation and use it to examine fame and the man-woman relationship, and make it funny. But �America�s Sweethearts� isn�t so lucky. Christopher Walken, as the nearly deranged director of the movie-within-the-movie, is pretty funny, and Cusack has some fantasy revenge sequences that are amusing. But watching his histrionics over Zeta-Jones are not, his fistfight with Hank Azaria is timed clumsily, and the movie is a little too polite when it comes to satirizing celebrity. Compared to Robert Altman�s �The Player,� in which a Hollywood exec gets away with murder while waxing sadly over how art is overlooked in favor of profit, �America�s Sweethearts� is not especially pointed. The test of a romantic comedy is that we want the couple to get together, and the test of satire is whether it teaches us while being funny. �America�s Sweethearts� accomplishes neither. Sorry.
Finished April 10th, 2003
Copyright � 2003 Friday & Saturday Night
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