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America's Sweethearts Customer Reviews (1 - 3 of 44 Reviews)

Charming
"America's Sweethearts" is co-written by Billy Crystal and manages to explore the whole celebrity-couple hypocrisy. Even though this movie was made in 2001, that hypocrisy is still very much around. Look around;
Brad Pitt-Angelina Jolie, Tom Cruise-Katie Holmes, Jennifer Aniston-Vince Vaughan, and Nicole Kidman-Keith Urban, just to name a few, are all products of the media's attention. This movie is cheesy, stupid, and pokes fun at what's going on and is really, truly funny. Billy Crystal plays a veteran press agent named Lee, who has just been fired by his boss Dave Kingman (Stanley Tucci, 'The Devil Wears Prada'). As he's leaving, Dave invites him into the screening room to see the final movie starring celebrity couple Gwen Harrison (Oscar winner Catherine Zeta-Jones, Best Supporting Actress 'Chicago') and Eddie Thomas (John Cusack, 'The Ice Harvest'). They were america's sweethearts, but not they've broken up. As they sit down to watch the movie, they discover that the film has been taken hostage by it's crazed director Hal Weiddman (the wonderful Christopher Walken) and will not be shown until the press junket. In order to distract the press, Lee has to make sure he can get Gwen and Eddie back together...Or at least, make it look like they have. Lee enlists the help of Gwen's sister/personal assistant Kiki (Oscar winner Julia Roberts, Best Actress 'Erin Brockovich'), who secretly harbors a crush on Eddie. While the film does follow the basic romantic-comedy formula, it works and it is funny. Hank Azaria ('Along Came Polly' & 'The Simpsons) turns up playing Gwen's spanish boyfriend and is of course, hilarious. Walken is perfect as the crazed director and Cusack, Zeta-Jones, Roberts, & Crystal are all so likeable...This movie is kind of hard to resist.

GRADE: A-


Enchanting!
It is no surprise why Billy Crystal is one of America's Sweethearts, because we in America just love him. I really wish that this movie could have had a little less of Julia Roberts and John Cusack, and a little more of Billy's shenanigans like he does so delightfully during the Oscars. Maybe he could have sung a few songs about Catherine Zeta Jones (and even made silly references to how old her husband--Michael Douglas--is), and done a snappy little dance. That would have made this movie slightly more enjoyable.

But even though they didn't do that, I would pay money to see Julia Roberts fall in love with anything--even a plate of yams--because she is just so down-to-earth. In real life I just know she's like any other normal person, because that's what she says to the paparazzi all the time. This is clearly the role that everyone will remember her for.

For Comedy Lovers
This guilty pleasure has the consistency of cotton candy and is every bit as delightful. Those who would put it under the microscope, as if it were The Bicycle Thief, Battleship Potemkin, or Day For Night, really could benefit from a week off - this is a screwball comedy for heaven's sake. And what fun it is. Consider the dream cast, Julia Roberts (seriously threatening to act), Billy Crystal (borsht belt not yet dead - just not feeling so well), Catherine Zeta-Jones (superb - her best performance ever), John Cusack (always on time), Hank Azaria (fantastic), Stanley Tucci (consistently funny), Christopher Walken (marvelous as a deranged lunatic - typecasting?), Alan Arkin (still at it, terrific), and Seth Green (impeccable as a sleazy studio hack). The script is by Billy Crystal and Peter Tolan. For Crystal, who has spent his entire life in show business, these red carpets are very well worn and familiar, which makes it easy for him to set up smart and often biting jokes lampooning celebrity superficiality, falseness, backstabbing, and profound insecurity. That he and Tolan were unable to create a credible plot to hang these jokes on, like ornaments on a tree, would be a problem if the film had aspirations other than to amuse - as it is, the trip itself provides so much fun that the lack of destination, or even a reason to get there, is not terribly consequential. The credit for this goes to a series of marvelous performances, led by Catherine Zeta-Jones who plays a gloriously narcissistic movie star. She inhabits this role so unapologetically that you can almost see her wink at the camera as if to say, "Yes, I know I'm playing myself, and you know it too." Julia Roberts, playing her wallflower sister, is funny casting at the very least. Remarkably, she gives the film one of its only sincere and stirring performances. The reliable John Cusack is likeable as a dazed celebrity struggling to juggle dualities, torn between two sisters, movie star smile barely concealing a disintegrating personality. Hank Azaria, as the staggeringly dim Latin lover Ms. Zeta-Jones has picked up for the moment like a glossy magazine, is so good that he practically walks off with the movie in his brief scenes. Everything about the film is false, a false romance between "America's Sweethearts" holds a studio together, the press is invited on a junket to promote a movie that doesn't exist; indeed, part of the film's comedy and pleasure is that it rewards our most wicked suspicions about Hollywood. Ultimately it's your choice. You can watch a depressed Swede play chess with a guy in a Speedo and a cape, or you can watch Catherine Zeta-Jones fire off zingers penned by a latter-day Henny Youngman. Either way, it's pretty funny.

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