Review: Romance by the numbers

Geoff Carter

Thursday, July 19, 2001 | 9:41 a.m.

America's Sweethearts

Grade: One and a half stars

Starring: John Cusack, Julia Roberts, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Billy Crystal.

Screenplay: Billy Crystal and Peter Tolan.

Director: Joe Roth.

Rated: PG-13 for language, some crude and sexual humor.

Running time: 101 minutes.

"America's Sweethearts" is a different kind of Hollywood satire. It was directed by a studio executive, is filled with film industry in-jokes, and doesn't have a single actor that isn't typecast, a single performance that isn't ludicrously overdone - come to think of it, "America's Sweethearts" is exactly like every other Hollywood comedy of the past few years.

Think I'm wrong? Look at the roster: "Notting Hill." "Bowfinger." Even "Shrek" works from the assumption that the moviegoing public cares about Hollywood's pain and suffering. Like Jeffrey Katzenberg, whose "Shrek" was just an excuse to bare his teeth at Disney and Michael Eisner, "Sweethearts" is former Disney executive Joe Roth's statement on studio hegemony - the poor, BMW-driving worms turning against the foot that crushes its parking space.

There's just one problem with comedies like "America's Sweethearts": No one cares. Who really cares what happens to studio employees as long as we get our flying dinosaurs and wisecracking ogres? I could more easily identify with the guests of Roth's little pity party if I didn't know that they didn't earn millions and millions of dollars per picture, every last cent of it peeled off our poor, deluded wallets. We follow Hollywood relationships only to watch them fail, and our love for anyone in that business - Kidman/Cruise, Katzenberg/Eisner, what have you - doesn't necessarily translate into cash.

"Sweethearts," as written by Billy Crystal and Peter Tolan ("Analyze This") seems aware of this at the outset, but soon veers off into trash talk and awkward slapstick. John Cusack and Catherine Zeta-Jones star as Eddie Thomas and Gwen Harrison, a husband-and-wife team who make terrible-looking movies like "Requiem for an Outfielder."

When Gwen leaves Eddie for a dimwitted Latino named Hector (Hank Azaria, in a performance that begs picketing), studio executives spring to action to reunite the stars one last time to promote their last film together, which is being held hostage by its Kubrick-like director (Christopher Walken, in a funny cameo). Press agent Lee Philips (Crystal) is called in to run the press junket and bring Gwen and Eddie together for a last, career-saving hurrah, which he does with the help of Gwen's harried sister Kiki (Julia Roberts).

That's all the plot you need, apparently. Given a premise - that's all you need to sell a picture these days - "Sweethearts" meanders from setup to setup, sometimes held aloft by its stars. Zeta-Jones is perfectly unlikable and utterly fantastic; Cusack pulls off his guy-undone-by-love routine once again (Cusack needs to play some sort of kung-fu jerk, and soon); Crystal does his awards-night shtick to diminishing returns and Julia Roberts is, wholly and completely, Julia Roberts. Even the fat suit she's made to wear in flashback sequences can't hide her toothy grin. She over-exposes everything around her.

Not to say that's a bad thing, in a comedy that features such tired gags as the crotch-sniffing pit bull, the guy falling in a cactus and the old golf-ball-upside-the-head. Some lines of dialogue pop out - Stanley Tucci, in an all-too-brief cameo as a studio chief, screams, "There's only been one genius in this business - Senor Wences!"

For the most part, however, the lines lie down for whoever's speaking them, and most of the actors seem too bored with the proceedings to make anything of them. It's another dull day in Hollywood, and we're buying lunch for the entire lazy population.