America's Sweethearts

Expensive romantic comedies, such as "America's Sweethearts," seal their own endings by the amounts they pay their actors. No way is some studio exec going to spend twenty million dollars to get Julia Roberts and not have her end up in the arms of the highest-paid male thespian, in this case John Cusack. So even before you go into the theater, you know how the film is going to end. The job of the romantic comedy (as of the action film, and every other predictable genre) is to put the outcome in some sort of doubt (how will the lovers overcome the fact that they hate each other?), make reaching the end fun (witty dialogue, cleavage shots from both genders), or provide something else entirely to distact the audience while the plot hums along (enter wacky friends).

"America's Sweethearts" does none of these things, which means the basic structure of the romantic comedy is exposed in all its vapidity: boy meets girl, boy does not have girl for about ninety minutes, boy gets girl. It's not charming, it's not winning, it's just boring.

The supposed special draw of this one is that real-life big Hollywood stars are playing made-up big Hollywood stars. For example, Cusack plays Eddie Thomas, who once was box-office gold with his wife Gwen Harrison, played by the luscious Catherine Zeta-Jones. Now, their marriage has been rent in two by a sensual Spanish stereotype named Hector (Hank Azaria). Gwen happily shacks up with Hector and remains oblivious to everyone around her, while Eddie suffers some sort of nervous breakdown and remains obsessed with Gwen. Their stars, understandably, dim. However, the former lovebirds had one last film in the can, and press agent Lee (co-writer and producer Billy Crystal) is determined to get them to promote it with all the fake amity they can muster.

The key is Gwen's intelligent, funny, long-suffering sister and assistant, Kiki (the aforementioned Roberts). While trying to herd her unruly sister from press event to press event, she pines for the can't-help-it romantic love she knows Eddie can give. Will Eddie continue to pine for Gwen, or will he choose the woman with the pleasant personality, who coincidentally is being paid more to be in the film than the other woman?

This might be an open question in a normal universe, since Catherine Zeta-Jones is just that much more attractive than Julia Roberts. But in this film, Gwen shows no sign of any character traits that anyone could ever be attracted to. Indeed, she vigorously avoids showing such traits, constantly insisting that everyone around her make pointless sacrifices and whining endlessly about her so-called horrible life. Choosing to restart a romance with Gwen would be like choosing to put your hand back in a deep-fat fryer. There is no uncertainty at all, not even in the little mystical coincidence thrown in under Romantic Comedy Law Sec. 46.

Witty dialogue? One might hope for some in a film co-written by a comedian. Cusack gets some good stuff to say, and says it well; his comic gift singlehandedly makes much of this film tolerable. His reading of the line "I think I've made progress on my security. Do you think I'm secure?" is the best thing in this film. Crystal also gives himself, Stanley Tucci as an unscrupulous studio boss (please forgive the redundancy) and Azaria a bunch of things to say, some of which are even amusing. But the dialogue between the three leads is unforgivably flat, almost as if Crystal and co-writer Peter Tolan had decided that everything those three say is important enough that they need to put it in small, predictable words to avoid confusing the audience.

There is also an undercurrent of satire about Hollywood cynicism in this film. For example, we learn that press agents are unscrupulous, and that image is all that matters to marketers. We also learn that everyone in Hollywood is obsessed with money, and willing to say and do anything that will lead to their accumulating more of it. Thank you, "America's Sweethearts," for making us aware of these truths, which were heretofore unknown.

"America's Sweethearts," therefore, features one-dimensional characters doing predictable things with little or nothing to leaven the predictability. The sad thing about it is that it will make a lot of money from devotees of Julia Roberts, who will flock to the theater to root on their heroine no matter what some pasty-faced movie reviewer tells them to do. Those of you with no such predilictions and no other options should just face another evening of home-bound tedium; being bored at home can't possibly cost as much as being bored at "America's Sweethearts."

ANDREW IS ANNOYED

At one point in this film, John Cusack delivers the line "I'm a paranoid schizophrenic! I'm my own entourage!" I thought Cusack would have been well-informed enough to know that multiple personality disorder is one possible manifestation of the general collection of disorders known as schizophrenia, which includes many disorders which have absolutely nothing to do with multiple personalities. It is time screenwriters, comedians and everyone else understood something: SCHIZOPHRENIA AND MULTIPLE PERSONALITY DISORDER ARE NOT THE SAME FREAKING THING! (Not that I enjoyed "Me, Myself & Irene," but at least it used the right terminology.) It would help if we understood mental illness if we're going to try to "tolerate" it.

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