What a cast, what a cast, what a cast. And what a shame, what a shame, what a shame. Catherine Zeta-Jones Douglas, Julia Roberts, John Cusack and Billy Crystal are the foursome which try to bring us this summer’s madcap romantic comedy. And try as they might, they fail miserably.
This movie has Billy Crystal written all over it. That may be because he co-wrote it. But even in scenes he does not appear in, I could feel his presence in the words the other characters were speaking. It’s that “Borscht Belt”, Catskills kind of comedy which should really only be delivered by Billy or maybe a Mel Brooks. Which is why the first fifteen minutes of the movie are pretty funny. It’s mostly Billy setting up the story and bringing us some laughs. It’s only ruined by the presence of that lizard Larry King, but enough about him.
Billy plays a publicist for a movie studio, but he’s just been fired. He can get his job back if he can save the studio’s latest release. Pretty soon after this you’ll wonder why he would want that job back. The movie in peril stars Gwen and Eddie, played by Zeta-Jones and Cusack. They are an on-screen and off-screen couple, having made about nine successful movies together. But she has run off with a guy named Hector, played by Hank Azaria. This has ruined the marriage and possibly this new movie, so it’s up to Billy to try and bring them together at least until the movie opens.
It isn’t long into this movie when I realized how dreadful these characters were and how much I hated them. First there’s Hector, played by Azaria. He plays Hector with that now completely unfunny “Ricky Ricardo” touch. Most of the humor here revolves around Hector’s mispronouncing words which contain the letters “h” and “j”. So that “junket” is pronounced “hunket”. Funny, yes? If you saw the movie “Birdcage” in which Azaria plays the gay couple’s houseboy, you already know this character. Mildly amusing then, completely not amusing now. But this gets worse. I thought about walking out the longer I had to see the Zeta-Jones and Cusack characters. Gwen is the over-the-top pampered movie star, whining through every scene. The joke is, “everything is about me, me, me”. That got old, really old. Eddie is the pill- popping mental patient, completely torn up by Gwen’s dumping him. Funny for about five minutes, very tiring the rest of the way.
It’s left to Julia Roberts to save this movie and it didn’t happen. She plays Kiki, Gwen’s sister and personal assistant. It took me a while to figure out they were sisters, and you know why? Because I didn’t care! Anyway, Kiki is the old ugly duckling turned into the swan story. She’s Cinderella with Gwen being the evil step-sister. The beauty in the backround who puts up with her sister’s every demand. We have to wait and wait and wait until she finally fights back. Tiring, very tiring. You will get to see Julia in the fat suit though. It’s the new hip thing to do – put the thin starlet in the fat suit (Monica on “Friends”). Not enough to save this stinker though.
What does help is Crystal and a special surprise character played by Christopher Walken. He’s the director of the Gwen and Eddie movie, and too bad he only shows up at the beginning and the end. As usual, Walken plays a nutball, a kind of a Unabomber guy whose movie turns out to be a behind the scenes look at Eddie and Gwen and Kiki in sort of a candid camera deal. Which was perfect, because at about this point I was wondering how much longer are people going to shell out ten bucks for drivel like this before the “Survivor” craze which bumped many bad sitcoms off of television, starts bumping bad movies like this off of the movie screen. Can’t you see it- “Survivor:The Movie”. “America’s Sweethearts” tried too hard to satirize the phoniness of Hollywood. We know all about it already. How about being a little more subtle? I give it a “4.0” on the scale.
