MadsenOMC
12-20-2005, 10:36 AM
SPOILERS!!!
Rumor Has It is nearly a disaster. The behind the scenes turmoil has resulted in a gigantic mess and a huge waste of an excellent cast. This is Alex and Emma director Rob Reiner, not When Harry Met Sally.
Reiner stated that original writer/director Ted Griffin (who receives writing credit as T.M. Griffin), who grew up in the Los Angeles area, always heard stories about The Graduate being based on a real family.
That’s an intriguing idea for a movie. Unfortunately, it receives rather perfunctory treatment here. It doesn’t take Rumor Has It long to devolve into a conventional romantic comedy. By then, The Graduate seems like an afterthought.
Sarah Huttinger (Jennifer Aniston) writes obituaries for The New York Times. She and her lawyer/boyfriend Jeff (Mark Ruffalo) are flying to Pasadena to attend the wedding of Sarah’s younger sister, Annie (Mena Suvari).
Sarah is a confused wreck. She has nothing in common with her family, something that has always confused and tormented her. And even though Jeff is a great guy and wants to marry her, she isn’t sure. Something just feels off to her.
Following a disastrous attempt at joining the mile-high club, Sarah and Jeff arrive at the airport and are greeted by Sarah’s father, Earl (Richard Jenkins).
Before the wedding, Sarah spends some time with her grandmother (just don’t call her that), Katherine (Shirley MacLaine). While talking about Sarah’s deceased mother, Katherine lets something slip. A week before she married Earl, Sarah’s mother fled to Cabo San Lucas. But that’s all she’ll say.
Now even more confused, Sarah visits her mother’s best friend (a blonde Kathy Bates) to learn more. It seems that her mother spent a few days with a classmate of hers, Beau Burroughs (Kevin Costner).
Jeff has already pointed out that Sarah was born nearly nine months after the wedding. It isn’t hard to connect the dots. Is Beau her father?
That’s not all Sarah learns about Beau. He was friends and went to school with Charles Webb, who wrote the novel The Graduate. He slept not only with Sarah’s mother, but Katherine as well. And of course, his initials are BB, the same as Benjamin Braddock’s, Dustin Hoffman’s character.
So it’s true. Sarah’s family was the basis for The Graduate. Beau points out that they changed a few details. He never graduated from college (The Dropout is not a good title) and he never ran off with Sarah’s mother.
The previews allude to it, so it isn’t really a spoiler to say that Sarah ends up sleeping with Beau. Having sex with a man you know has already slept with your mother and grandmother is pretty disgusting.
This all happens in the first third of Rumor Has It. For the duration, it shifts into a traditional romantic comedy. What will Sarah do? Will she stay with Beau, who lavishes her with his private jet and Oceanside estate, or will she return to Jeff?
Unfortunately, it’s really, really difficult to care. Sarah is a flimsy character, completely defined by her confusion. There isn’t much else to her and the audience certainly doesn’t sympathize with her.
She is a selfish whiner, and Aniston’s performance isn’t good enough to make us care about her. An actress with very limited range, her one-note work here is dull.
Which also describes the last hour of the movie. It’s excruciatingly dull. It appears that all of the interesting ideas were used up in the first 30 minutes. After that, Rumor Has It is stuck in neutral, going nowhere fast.
MacLaine is the saving grace. She has a few great lines (“Go play with your dick”) and at least keeps the movie watchable during her few scenes.
Other than MacLaine, there isn’t much to recommend about Rumor Has It. Costner is coasting, saddled with a weak script. He isn’t nearly as charming as he was in the far better The Upside of Anger. Like everyone else, he’s one-dimensional here.
Rumor Has It reeks of problems. If you removed all mention of The Graduate, you’d have a formulaic, uninspired romantic comedy. But that is the only interesting aspect of the movie. It feels like they played it down and tried to save the movie by turning it into something else entirely.
And please, somebody give Mark Ruffalo career intervention. His role here is essentially indistinguishable from 13 Going on 30 and Just Like Heaven. He is wasting his enormous talent.
And that is all Rumor Has It is. A waste of talent. If a slight, predictable and clichéd romantic comedy is what you’re in the mood for this holiday season, look no further.
4/10
Rumor Has It is nearly a disaster. The behind the scenes turmoil has resulted in a gigantic mess and a huge waste of an excellent cast. This is Alex and Emma director Rob Reiner, not When Harry Met Sally.
Reiner stated that original writer/director Ted Griffin (who receives writing credit as T.M. Griffin), who grew up in the Los Angeles area, always heard stories about The Graduate being based on a real family.
That’s an intriguing idea for a movie. Unfortunately, it receives rather perfunctory treatment here. It doesn’t take Rumor Has It long to devolve into a conventional romantic comedy. By then, The Graduate seems like an afterthought.
Sarah Huttinger (Jennifer Aniston) writes obituaries for The New York Times. She and her lawyer/boyfriend Jeff (Mark Ruffalo) are flying to Pasadena to attend the wedding of Sarah’s younger sister, Annie (Mena Suvari).
Sarah is a confused wreck. She has nothing in common with her family, something that has always confused and tormented her. And even though Jeff is a great guy and wants to marry her, she isn’t sure. Something just feels off to her.
Following a disastrous attempt at joining the mile-high club, Sarah and Jeff arrive at the airport and are greeted by Sarah’s father, Earl (Richard Jenkins).
Before the wedding, Sarah spends some time with her grandmother (just don’t call her that), Katherine (Shirley MacLaine). While talking about Sarah’s deceased mother, Katherine lets something slip. A week before she married Earl, Sarah’s mother fled to Cabo San Lucas. But that’s all she’ll say.
Now even more confused, Sarah visits her mother’s best friend (a blonde Kathy Bates) to learn more. It seems that her mother spent a few days with a classmate of hers, Beau Burroughs (Kevin Costner).
Jeff has already pointed out that Sarah was born nearly nine months after the wedding. It isn’t hard to connect the dots. Is Beau her father?
That’s not all Sarah learns about Beau. He was friends and went to school with Charles Webb, who wrote the novel The Graduate. He slept not only with Sarah’s mother, but Katherine as well. And of course, his initials are BB, the same as Benjamin Braddock’s, Dustin Hoffman’s character.
So it’s true. Sarah’s family was the basis for The Graduate. Beau points out that they changed a few details. He never graduated from college (The Dropout is not a good title) and he never ran off with Sarah’s mother.
The previews allude to it, so it isn’t really a spoiler to say that Sarah ends up sleeping with Beau. Having sex with a man you know has already slept with your mother and grandmother is pretty disgusting.
This all happens in the first third of Rumor Has It. For the duration, it shifts into a traditional romantic comedy. What will Sarah do? Will she stay with Beau, who lavishes her with his private jet and Oceanside estate, or will she return to Jeff?
Unfortunately, it’s really, really difficult to care. Sarah is a flimsy character, completely defined by her confusion. There isn’t much else to her and the audience certainly doesn’t sympathize with her.
She is a selfish whiner, and Aniston’s performance isn’t good enough to make us care about her. An actress with very limited range, her one-note work here is dull.
Which also describes the last hour of the movie. It’s excruciatingly dull. It appears that all of the interesting ideas were used up in the first 30 minutes. After that, Rumor Has It is stuck in neutral, going nowhere fast.
MacLaine is the saving grace. She has a few great lines (“Go play with your dick”) and at least keeps the movie watchable during her few scenes.
Other than MacLaine, there isn’t much to recommend about Rumor Has It. Costner is coasting, saddled with a weak script. He isn’t nearly as charming as he was in the far better The Upside of Anger. Like everyone else, he’s one-dimensional here.
Rumor Has It reeks of problems. If you removed all mention of The Graduate, you’d have a formulaic, uninspired romantic comedy. But that is the only interesting aspect of the movie. It feels like they played it down and tried to save the movie by turning it into something else entirely.
And please, somebody give Mark Ruffalo career intervention. His role here is essentially indistinguishable from 13 Going on 30 and Just Like Heaven. He is wasting his enormous talent.
And that is all Rumor Has It is. A waste of talent. If a slight, predictable and clichéd romantic comedy is what you’re in the mood for this holiday season, look no further.
4/10