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Reviews:
Good
Morning! America’s
Sweethearts
by Michael Flanagan
Super
America’s Sweethearts
starts out setting up a cliché plot and then
follows up by making you forget about it.
The opening of the film is a very funny
montage of movie clips from star couple Eddie and
Gwen’s (John Cusack & Catherine Zeta Jones)
fictional films, satirizing Hollywood’s worst
movies. (In
a courtroom film, Cusack carries on with “I
object, your honor.
I object because I love her.”)
Then, we discover that they have since
separated (think Tom & Nicole) and Lee (Billy
Crystal, who co-wrote the film with Peter Tolan)
has been fired as their press agent.
Follow it up with Stanley Tucci as an
executive and Christopher Walken as an eccentric
director holding their last film together hostage,
then stick in the clichéd “if you can get them
together, you’ll get your job back,” and
you’ve got what seems to be a great setup for a
movie that’s bound to fail.
Yet it doesn’t.
What follows is some of the funniest
writing in a comedy movie in a very long time.
In the age of gross-out comedy, or two and
a half hour romantic comedies that fall flat at
hour one, it’s great to see a classic style film
that’s funny, not too long (though some scenes
slowed the pace a bit), and filled with great
talent. I
was so wrapped up in the comedy and the “you
know it is but they don’t” romance between
Cusack and Julia Roberts that I forgot the
original plot—Lee needs to save his job—and
instead it just becomes a fun time with perfect
setups and punch lines throughout.
Minor characters even play a big part: Seth
Green plays an absolutely ridiculous studio
employee who serves as the center of slapstick.
Add in Hank Azaria as a hilarious Latin
lover for Jones, and, once again, the movie sets
itself up to drop the ball, yet carries it with
ease.
The finale of the film
doesn’t try to top the rest of the movie.
Most comedies today, such as the Farrelly
Brothers’ films, require an explosive ending in
an attempt to get the biggest laugh of the movie.
America’s Sweethearts simply gives
us more of what we enjoyed for the entire film:
the characters.
Cusack, Jones, Azaria, Roberts, Tucci, and
Walken are given a metaphoric curtain call where
they showcase what makes this movie great, and
then quietly exit the picture. And
as a perfect conclusion, Crystal, the man who
orchestrated the plot on screen and off, gets one
last punch line on a very surprising running joke.
Jump…Shoot…Score!
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America’s
Sweethearts
by Mark Capitelli
Pathetic
What a waste of film.
Corny jokes, annoying characters, cynical
writing and a sappy stupid plot makes America’s
Sweethearts one of the most annoying films I’ve
seen in the past five years.
The only good part of the film is
Christopher Walken, who did a fantastic job
playing an eccentric filmmaker. Unfortunately even
Walken couldn’t save this stinker.
Don’t make the mistake of picking this up
because it “looks cute.”
You will slap yourself silly later.
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