America's Sweethearts

As a fan of Julia Roberts, John Cusak, and Catherine Zeta Jones, I found this movie a total bore! Did this movie ever make it to theaters? It looks like something that would go straight to video. No wonder I had never heard of it before. A joke!

I don't understand how anyone could call this piece of tripe "the movie of the year." I usually avoid Julia Roberts movies like the plague, but my wife dragged me along to this one. I was hopeful that John Cusack's presence would make for something of a good experience, but there's only so much that one poor man can do. I hope he redeems himself soon! I'm VERY disappointed in Billy Crystal. Lisa Schwarzbaum at Entertainment Weekly has become my hero! She has the guts to tell the truth about the piffle Hollywood insists on putting out, hoping that media hype will cover for a lousy product. She made the right call on "Pay It Forward" and she makes the right call here, though I would have graded it a D- (instead of the C- she gave)

Joe Roth's "America's Sweethearts" starts off as an edgy dark comedy about the movie promotion business, then veers off into a conventional romantic comedy which better serves the talents of John Cusack, Julia Roberts and Catherine Zeta-Jones. This tangential storyline was written by Billy Crystal (also one the stars) and Lee Philips. The premise is very promising. America's Movie Sweethearts, Eddie Thomas (Cusack) and Gwen Harrison (Catherine Zeta-Jones), are no longer-- they are getting a divorce. In fact Gwen has a restraining order on Eddie following their dramatic break-up. Gwen is shacked up with a Spaniard dancer, Hector (an embarrassing loser role played by Hank Azaria). Eddie now resides in a spiritual retreat following his meltdown. However, Eddie and Gwen made one last movie with eccentric genius, reclusive director Hal Weidmann (perfectly played by Christopher Walken). No one has seen the film which looks to be a rip-off of Jean-Claude Van Damme's "Time Cop". Weidmann professes this unseen movie is his greatest work. Studio Exec., Dave Kingman (Stanley Tucci), convinces promotions expert, Lee Philips (Crystal) whom he fired, to stay on and orchestrate the press junket for the movie. To bring the estranged Eddie and Gwen together, Lee enlists the aid of Kiki Harrison (Roberts) who is not only Gwen's "doormat" sister, but also her personal assistant. We soon learn that big hearted Kiki has always loved Eddie. The movie industry inside jokes and details surrounding press junkets are great in the beginning of the movie. Though this wastes time in what is predictably a romance. Tucci's ruthless and humorless exec. is way too dark a character for this movie. Hector (Azaria) is a total waste of time here. For the amount of talent involved in this project it is amazing how much useless overhead is in the movie. Don't get me wrong here entirely-- I did enjoy the movie. What saves the movie are the wonderful talents of John Cusack and his natural chemistry with Julia Roberts. Zeta-Jones is believable as the self-absorbed ice bitch, Gwen-- let's hope that she does not make a habit of these kinds of roles. Julia Roberts is not stretching here as the good hearted, smart, and plain sister of movie star, Gwen. Though Roberts unquestionably has the movie star quality-- she enchants on screen. Cusack is the quirky romantic leading man of the Milennium, and plays Eddie with a bewilderment and smarts. You always get a sense of what's swirling in Cusack's Eddie's head. He is aware of his emotional instability, while promoting a movie he has never seen, with a woman he is no longer with. And the woman of his life is right in front of his face-- Kiki. Duh! Cusack is totally charming in his journey from cluelessness. Ultimately, he and Roberts make Sweethearts worth watching-- which is saying quite a lot.

... but there were parts of this movie I didn't like. I liked it when it was funny, but a lot of the relationship stuff didn't appeal to me. The opening of the new film by Eddie Thomas and Gwen Harrison was great. Well, the reaction to it, anyway. I liked the attempts by Crystal's character to get these two bickering movie stars together, and the various problems that made that more difficult. I'm glad this was sanitized for network TV. Julia Roberts did a good job as a plus-size woman, though her transformation was nothing short of a miracle, considering the time frame. For a change, she wasn't a beauty--at least not at first and certainly not in flashbacks to her chubby days. I liked most of her performance, but there were times when it's a good thing it was her, or the movie would have been in trouble. I wish I had known it was Hank Azaria playing Gwen's conceited and bumbling boyfriend. He was pretty good. Regardless of its faults, the surprise ending redeemed this movie. The two movie stars gave such laughably terrible performances in clips of their past work, and their next film promised more of the same ... but I won't say what the result was. Just know that it was not what one might expect.

America's Sweethearts sells itself on its cast, featuring American sweethearts like Julia Roberts, John Cusack, Billy Crystal and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Sounds like a formula for a good movie, right? Take real life movie stars that are loved by America and put them in a movie about hollywood-types and celebrities and call the movie 'America's Sweethearts.' Great idea, sure, until you go see the movie and realize that it is one of the most unoriginal, uninspired, idiotic scripts ever written. The humor is at best predictable and cliche, at worst deliberate and insulting to my intelligence. Even the funniest character, Christopher Walken's strange miser director, is a ball of over-used cliches about artsy film directors. I could swallow predictability and lame jokes if for one second I cared about one single freakin' character in the movie, but that would be too much to ask. Julia Roberts' character used to be fat, but she's already gone through her transformation before the beginning of the movie, so there's no pain with which to sympathize. John Cusack's character is supposed to be connecting to himself and you're supposed to be happy for him, but in flashbacks it seems like he was always pretty OK. There is other stuff that really irritated me in this movie - one example is Catherine Zeta-Jones' "Spaniard" boyfriend, who is the dumbest melting pot of misplaced stereotypes of Puerto Ricans I've seen on screen in awhile and would've offended me if I thought for the one second that the writer (Billy Crystal...wasn't he funny when I was a little kid?) actually cared the slightest bit about his movie and his characters, but I know (pray) that couldn't be true.

How this film was made with so many big stars is beyond me. This is a terrible cliché' ridden film with the worst acting any of these actors have ever done. It really surprises me that so many of these A list stars would agree to this unfunny film. What's even worse is the fact that is made almost 100 million here in the states. It does go to show however that big stars can pull in the bucks, even if the film is terrible. I felt sorry for everyone involved in this snore-fest. Billy Crystal tried his best with the what he was given and the rest of the stars seemed to be walking through the motions. Whatever you do, don't fall for the excellent cast because no one could have saved this.

I like every actor in this movie, but not in this film, an endless series of crotch and * jokes (oops, the film is dragging, so let's insert another one to perk it up). The audience of mostly women, young and old, was completely silent throughout the movie. MY wife and I have seen every chick flick this year, even the ones that were panned by critics, and we liked them all. But this movie is as bad as it gets. How bad? Worse than the Avengers! Worse than Duets. Worse than Heavens Gate. (Actually, I'm such a softy, I enjoyed parts of all three of those bombs.) Worse than any recent Diane Keaton, Steve Martin, or Alan Alda movie. Worse than even Adam Sandler at his worst. The actors looked totally embarrassed speaking their lines, as if their careers were being placed in immediate jeopardy. The only funny part of the movie was unintentional: when Chris Walken tells the press that the script was worthless, so he threw it out and substituted hidden camera footage. Wish they could have done that here. Watching any of these talented people in candid dressing room footage would have been funnier and more romantic.

indeed is John Cusack doing in this heap of crap? He's a truly gifted performer and writer plus he's extremely beautiful and has views I respect. I love the man but his judgement is so sorely lacking in accepting a role in this rubbish. Catherine Zeta Jones would be over stretching her abilities as an actress in a junior school production of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. She's dreadful and should stick to attending movie star bashes with her dad, no, sorry, he's her husband. At least he can bloody act. Perhaps she should consider taking a few lessons from him before her looks fade and she's got absolutely nothing to offer. Don't bother watching this film. You'll resent the time you wasted.

Normally, who is married to/engaged to/dating who in the movie world is something that I couldn't possibly care less about, and I still don't care, but America's Sweethearts manages to make that very subject amusing and entertaining. John Cusack and Catherine Zeta-Jones play Eddie Thomas and Gwen Harrison, two movie stars who have been tremendously successful working together and who have worked their way into the heart of the American public. The conflict comes from their highly publicized breakup, which has resulted in two consecutive box office failures for Gwen and some serious psychological problems for Eddie. Stanley Tucci takes on a small but very effective role as Dave Kingman, the short tempered studio executive, furious with Christopher Walken's much more entertaining Hal Weidmann, the introverted filmmaker who sent Kingman the first print of his film (after charging $86 million of the studio's money), which consisted of nothing but titles and the hilarious message, `We could also do these in blue.' Kingman throws a predictable but very funny tantrum. We spend the rest of the film wondering why Weidmann is so cocky toward Kingman and so close-mouthed about the film, but we are rewarded in the final act. Julia Roberts comes back in an ironic role when compared to her recent (and far superior) role in Notting Hill, in which she was America's Sweetheart who had fallen in love with a regular guy. Here, she is the constantly unnoticed sister of Gwen Harrison, her big movie star sister. Both women are perfectly cast as the famous movie star and the famous movie star's sister, but this is more a testament to their abilities as actors than it is to the ingenuity of the casting director. The acting was just excellent. Hank Azaria plays the part of Hector (`This is bull-chit!'), the over-the-top Spanish guy with the hilarious lisp that Gwen has been seeing ever since her rough break up with Eddie. Hector is an amusing character, but it is obvious from the first scene where we see him (in which he insists that he and Gwen will `go to the ‘hunket' together.') that he is an expendable character. He's funny, but he still badly mangled the Spanish accent as well as the lisp, coming off as amusing but impossible to take seriously. The entire romantic subplot of the film was predictable from the very beginning, if only because it was given away in its entirety in the theatrical trailer. If you have ever heard of this movie before watching it, then you've already seen the emotional scene where Kiki (Roberts) tells Eddie that that woman that he saw standing by the spa that he had to spend the rest of his life with was her, and not her sister Gwen. From that perspective, America's Sweethearts is one of those movies where if you've seen the preview, you've seen the movie (take Pleasantville as another example). Christopher Walken provides an excellent source of comic relief as well as one of the only really interesting characters in the film. He is the nutty filmmaker (indeed, the best films almost unwaveringly come from the people who are a little ‘off') who edits his films in the Unabomber's cabin, which he had moved onto his property, and who indeed created a truly memorable film, of which we unfortunately are only able to see a small portion. `The Blair Bitch Project,' as the press later calls it, is a kind of film that would be really interesting. The tabloids would have a field day. There are a lot of sight gags and low brow humor in America's Sweethearts, and it is reported to bear a striking resemblance to Singin' In The Rain (although remains far inferior to that classic musical comedy), but it manages to keep the audience entertained if not hanging on every word. True film fanatics are sure to pick it apart for nearly feeding off of classic films and for following such a clear-cut formula, but there is definitely something to be enjoyed here.

I have seen a lot of bad movies with big actors in it. But this movie was terrible. I have yet to see why people thought it was funny. The idea behind it is stupid. Plus all the things that are supposed to be funny are just dumb. Why anyone would want to watch this more than once just baffles me!