Julia Roberts, John Cusack, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Billy Crystal, Hank Azaria
[1 Star]
The true pleasure of TV's Designing Women sitcom came from watching Julia Sugarbaker (played by Dixie Carter) get, as the other characters on the show put it, "fired up." She would launch into a tirade, excoriating stupid behavior and people. Julia Roberts has a little Julia Sugarbaker inside her in America's Sweethearts. When she finally lets loose on those around her in a hilariously splenetic riff, it's a high point in this enjoyable show business comedy.
Roberts is Kiki Harrison, the much put-upon sister of spoiled movie diva Gwen Harrison (Zeta-Jones). Kiki has reason to vent after spending a long weekend babysitting Gwen, for whom she works as an assistant, at a publicity junket promoting Gwen's latest film. The problem is that Gwen's estranged hubby, Eddie Thomas (Cusack), who costarred with her in a half dozen hits before he caught her cheating on him, is also there to hype the picture. The task of keeping the peace between the sparring pair, once known as America's Sweethearts, falls to Kiki and Lee Phillips (Crystal), a veteran studio publicist. "You're the only one Gwen'll even pretend to listen to," Lee tells Kiki. Which is true, but of no help to Kiki when she is drawn to her sibling's ex and Gwen once again seductively crooks her finger in Eddie's direction.
Cowritten by Crystal and Peter Tolan and directed by Revolution Studios head Joe Roth, Sweethearts is that welcome rarity, a true ensemble piece in which everyone gets a chance to shine. Roberts is faultless, Zeta-Jones nails her imperious star, and Crystal oozes Hollywood schmooze. The "but" here is Cusack: Though charming as the emotionally overwrought Eddie, he never seems a marquee match for Zeta-Jones's Gwen. She'd eat him for breakfast and still be hungry. (PG-13)
Bottom Line: Light summer fun
Jurassic Park III
Sam Neill, Téa Leoni, William H. Macy, Alessandro Nivola, Trevor Morgan
It doesn't take long to become jaded. Just eight years ago the marauding dinosaurs in Jurassic Park (1993) had moviegoers gulping in terror. Now, two sequels later—and despite the fact that the digitally generated creatures look more ferociously real than ever as they thunder across the screen to chomp on yet another human—you sit there and yawn, "Oh, yeah, more monsters."
This is not, of course, the attitude of the characters being chased by the rapacious raptors in Jurassic Park III. These folks run and scream. A lot. Neill, who wasn't in the first sequel, reappears as paleontologist Alan Grant here. (Laura Dern also returns in a cameo.) After a plane crash, Grant is stranded, along with an assistant (Nivola) and a divorced couple (Leoni [see story on page 87] and Macy) searching for their missing son, on a remote island where herds of genetically engineered dinosaurs roam. (These critters are leftovers from the same corporate experiment gone bad that wreaked havoc in the first two films.) After 92 minutes of Grant and his comrades scrambling for safety, the film ends (rather abruptly), leaving room for JP IV. It's all competently done, but these newly minted dinos are starting to seem kind of prehistoric. (PG-13)
Bottom Line: Barney goes bad, yet again
>Actors can be so darn difficult. "I was," says a joking Jon Favreau, who directed and stars in the indie film Made. "I had a lot of trouble getting myself out of the trailer. But I got on my good side, and eventually a real friendship was formed." It was his real-life friendship with costar Vince Vaughn that inspired Favreau, 34, to write Made, a caper about two bungling would-be mobsters. "It's the chemistry behind the scenes that makes the film," says the Queens native, who dropped out of college in 1986 and eventually ended up in Hollywood. "Vince is more social and I'm more solitary. I mull things over."
The duo clicked while filming 1993's Rudy and proved they were money with moviegoers three years later with the Gen-X hit Swingers, which Favreau also wrote. But don't expect a sequel. "It would have been too fluffy a movie for us at this point in our lives to have us chasing women and trying to get phone numbers," says Favreau. Besides, these days he has another premiere on his mind: the imminent birth of his first child with wife Joya Tillem, 31, a doctor at L.A.'s Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. For once, he says, "I won't be worried about the box office."
>Cats & Dogs Kids will love this comedy about a war between talking critters, but adults may kibble. (PG)
Divided We Fall Wryly amusing Czech film observes how residents cope when their village is occupied by Nazis during World War II. (PG-13)
Legally Blonde Wins on appeal. Reese Witherspoon displays strong comic roots in a likable comedy about a ditsy law school student. (PG-13)
Memento Still the coolest movie out there. See it once and then see it again to try and catch what you missed the first time. (R)
The Score Solid if unambitious heist film is brightened considerably by an all-star cast boasting Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro and Edward Norton, all of whom are terrific. Worth seeing. (R)
- Contributors:
- Valerie O'Barr.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
