Harry here, and Capone strikes back against a film that assaulted his sensibilities to such a degree that... well, just read. Man. This one'll hurt...
Hey, Harry. Capone in Chicago here, and I’m feeling mighty low. What I’m about to say may at first sound like I’m going off on a tangent, but bear with me. One of the things that I enjoyed most about UNBREAKABLE has to do with the way the train crash at the beginning was handled. You never see it happen. You hear the gruesome details described and see fleeting glimpses of it on small T.V. sets in the background of a couple scenes, but most of it’s left to your imagination. The way the crash was described is that one train derails and falls onto the track of an oncoming speeding train, which the mashes into it and kills hundreds of people. Now, imagine that scenario plus the Hindenburg falling from the sky and landing right onto the crash site. THEN the Titanic is airlifted in from a nearby harbor and is dropped on top of that. Luckily, you don’t have to imagine such a complete and utter disaster. You can go see AMERICA’S SWEETHEARTS and have it all visualized beautifully for you.
Let me just expel this adjectives right now: Lame, fake, worthless, unfunny, uninspired, and just plain fucking awful. Of those words, the one I will focus mainly on is Fake. Everything about this movie feels fake. I found myself with one thought in my head: “People don’t/wouldn’t act like that.” I’m sure screenwriters Billy Crystal and Peter Tolan thought they were being so clever in providing us, the lowly public, with a look inside the press junket process. I’m sure Catherine Zeta-Jones (playing a superstar actress named Gwen Harrison) thought that by simply acting like a glamorous spoiled diva, we’d find her funny. Wrong! She doesn’t even have that reputation, does she? Julia Roberts is the one who repeatedly makes the point that she hates junkets every time she does one. She should have played that part. But I digress (as I suspect I’ll do often in this review). Crystal, Tolan, and Revolution studio head Joe Roth (who also directed this shit) should be physically punished for this film. I wish that the sour cock that spat out the seed that made Joe Roth had dropped off in a pustulent, lesion-ravaged manner before Roth was ever conceived.
The premise of the film is flawed from frame one. Zeta-Jones and John Cusack play married actors who have a string of successful films together. When the story begins, they’ve been broken up for over a year, but their final work together (a time-travel flick called TIME OVER TIME) is about to be released. The film’s space-cadet director, played by an almost unrecognizable Christopher Walken (looking lost and sad), holds the final print hostage. He refuses to release the film until the actual press junket, where hundreds of reporters gather at a resort location to screen the film and interview the film’s key players for five to ten minutes at a time. Instead of simply delaying the film’s release or getting a court order to retrieve the film from Walken, studio head Stanley Tucci decides to go ahead with the junket as planned. Already I’m shaking my head. Tucci hires the junket master (Crystal), who he’s just fired five minutes earlier, to run the event. Why did he fire Crystal? It’s never explained. Why was the fact that he fired him important to the story? It’s not. Tucci needs Crystal to somehow bring the feuding couple to the junket, and generate rumors that the two are getting back together. He’s hoping that the press will simply forget that there’s a movie to see and focus on the steamy bedroom gossip.
Cusack has taken residence in a self help palace run by the Alan Arkin, who I think has some sort of Indian or Middle-eastern accent and a white mane of hair. Nothing he says made me laugh. Zeta-Jones, the actual instigator of the breakup, is living with a “Spaniard” named Hector, horribly overplayed by Hank Azaria (apparently given the role after Robert Downey Jr. bowed out). Azaria, whom I usually love, puts on some bizarre Cuban-Spanish-Mexican-Puerto Rican-Banana Butt-fuck accent that changes from scene to scene. It’s basically a mix of Tony Montana and the character Azaria played in THE BIRDCAGE. Whatever it is, it’s bad, bordering on racist.
Julia Roberts is Gwen’s sister and personal assistant Kiki, who used to be fat and now is skinny and apparently much more appealing. Overweight women of the world should love that message. She has always held secret desires for Cusack. We learn all this in the first half hour of the movie, and I’m guessing you can already guess who end up with whom. And about Roberts in the fat suit. She looks about as convincing as Martin Short on his new T.V. show on Comedy Central. And again, there’s no real reason for the fat suit. She’s just as lacking in confidence skinny. No one mentions her being heavy when she is (in a couple flashback scenes), and only a couple of mentions are made about her losing the weight. Why, Billy, why? I’ll tell you why: to generate publicity about Julia in a fat suit. Life imitates art. The filmmakers are hoping to distract from the overall awfulness of AMERICA’S SWEETHEARTS by focusing on Julia’s blubber butt costume. Don’t look behind the curtain!
Crystal does his job of distracting the press corps by staging some of the most ridiculous incidents between the two leads. Even if the things that happen in the movie were inspired by true events, it sure as hell doesn’t feel like it. Everybody delivers their dialogue at a high-pitched squeal. Crystal’s performance is nothing but double takes and wide-eyed shock. His script is nothing but one-liners, ass jokes, and the broadest of broad humor. Every scene that might have been touching or funny is delivered in front of a crowd of people (usually the press), thereby making it totally unbelievable. Let me tell every screenwriter in the world something: I’M SO FUCKING TIRED OF SCENES WHERE THE MAIN CHARACTERS DECLARE THEIR LOVE FOR EACH OTHER IN FRONT OF HUNDRED OF PEOPLE THAT IF YOU WRITE ANOTHER SCENE LIKE THAT, I WILL HUNT YOU DOWN AND KILL YOU AND YOUR FAMILY!!! DO YOU UNDERSTAND?!!!! Usually these scenes occur at weddings or family reunions; here it’s a press screening. I suppose I should give them points for originality.
Are there any brights spots? Yes. Seth Green as Crystal’s assistant made me laugh a couple times. And Walken’s micro-cameo is kind of amusing just for the visual of Walken with long grey hair, a beard, and hippie clothes. But in the concluding scene at the film’s screening, where Walken really should have killed, he just fizzles. Also, the actual press junket, where Cusack and Zeta-Jones are put side by side to be interviewed by dozens of reports is kind of cute, but again, the PG-13 rating stops this sequence from being as biting as it needed to be.
AMERICA’S SWEETHEARTS is the kind of movie that could only have been made by people who think their love lives are at the center of the universe. Crystal’s version of a biting inside look is tempered severely by his fear of offending anybody. God forbid anyone should make actors look like idiots. Guess what people, you all look like idiots for making this movie.
Harry, I will conclude by giving you the most distressing news about AMERICA’S SWEETHEARTS. As I was leaving the packed screening last night, most of the audience was saying the same thing: “That was cute.” Hollywood gives us what it thinks we want, and we accept it because we think there’s nothing better out there. This movie opens this Friday. Here in Chicago, MADE also opens this Friday. Which do you think will do better business?
Head in the oven,
Capone (CLICK HERE TO SEND ME BULLETS)
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