America's Sweethearts starts as though it plans to build the laughs to a climax, then we realize the build-up was the climax. It's funniest in its quietest moments, which span the opening reel, before the script, co-written by star Billy Crystal, retreats in what could best be called earnestness. What, then, is meant to be a satire starts getting morals about the time we want the gloves to come off.
The movie sure is a star turn: Julia Roberts (the headliner, but fourth or fifth in terms of screen time) plays the honest assistant Kiki to her movie star sister Gwen (Catherine Zeta-Jones), who's a star only if she's paired with her off-screen husband Eddie, played by John Cusack, as sort of a real sad sack of the movie god.
Now they've broken up following Gwen's affair with a Latin lothario (Hank Azaria). They have one last movie together Time Over Time, a movie unseen by anybody but the auteur director, played in wild-man style by Christopher Walken, who's holding it hostage for the junket. Crystal is Lee, the publicist attempting to put together the junket and keep planet alignments intact. Madcap crap ensues, as it's pretty clear Eddie still needs to be around Gwen, while Gwen doesn't know what she wants, until it pops straight into her head.
I've been to a few junkets. They're basically like what's portrayed in the movie, though it could have been a lot harder on the press members, some of whom are trip and autograph whores on these things. The harder they'd have been, the funnier it could have been, but Crystal and writing partner Peter Tolan aren't, so it isn't. Roberts is left holding the bag a bit, trying to keep aloft a film where she alone is a sympathetically drawn character.
She performs admirably, and her Kiki, who's always held a torch for Cusack's character, has a few nice repartee sessions with Eddie that we wish could be duplicated a few times over. But director Joe Roth wants the pace to move too fast to stay with any joke for very long, and unwisely believes that Azaria's Ricky Ricardo-impression as the Latin lover is some act we want to see more than once.
And Zeta-Jones, who is swiftly drawing herself into roles that require her to be no more than a catty Kathy, wears on the brain after awhile. Her Gwen is drawn somewhere in the middle of normal and neurotic, and it's annoying; it's no fun to watch somebody point and bitch for two hours. It's much like the small part she played in Cusack's High Fidelity - the character we scorned so much. There's a reason, you see, that was a small role.
Since the writing's weak, and the acting's all we have, America's Sweethearts leaves a lot at the gate in terms of desire. The whole gang is going through the motions here. And Roberts, more gifted comically than most give her credit for, has made her second of three smaller, supporting roles following the Oscar-winning Erin Brockovich (the rat-pack remake Ocean's Eleven is coming up in November.) Time to turn back to the main stage? Yessiree.
America's Sweethearts Starring Julia Roberts, Billy Crystal, Catherine Zeta-Jones and John Cusack. Directed by Joe Roth. Rated PG-13 for more language than you'd expect, and a few toilet humor jokes.
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