Get your own Free Home Page
There's so much buzz surrounding Julia Roberts' latest movie that Hollywood is already murmuring about giving her an Oscar nomination next year. Maybe even a whole new category:
"Best Supporting Effects".
See, what everybody wants to know isn't where she found the motivation to so convincingly play the title character, a real-life crusader who, with no legal training, was instrumental in winning the biggest direct-action lawsuit in U.S. history after a utility company leaked chemical apocalypse into the water supply of a little California town. What's got the commonweal a-twitter is, where'd Julia get the rack?
I mean, I went to see this movie with my mom -- her sister Donna was going to join us because she's a big Julia fan, but Ginny, Donna's friend in Arizona, called her and said she saw it with a theater full of old people (Mom goes, "Who'd she expect to find in a theater in Arizona? The Olsen twins?") who got bored and fell asleep because all Julia does is show her boobs and swear. I said, "Those people aren't old; they're dead. Julia talks dirty and shows her boobs? Sign me up!" Anyway, Ginny must have fallen asleep early and woken up in the middle of the second half of a double bill including The Next Best Thing and gotten Julia mixed up with Madonna (who also shows her boobs and swears a lot, but does little else, if you don't count her habit of randomly growing that English accent which sounds like she's channeling Leslie Howard), because Erin Brockovich has a lot more going on than mere cleavage and bad words. Mom thought so too, because she called Donna when we got home and told her it was a good movie and the vulgarity fit the character. But she still wanted to know how the moviemakers managed to put an hourglass shape on the usually svelte Ms. Roberts. "Do you think she had implants?" I told Mom to bite her tongue, I'd thank her not to speak in a disparaging manner about the woman I love.
Brockovich is a brassy, tactless, twice-divorced Midwestern beauty queen with three young kids to support who inveigles her way into the heart of aging L.A. attorney Ed Masry (too-long-absent Albert Finney). She blames him for losing her lawsuit over a serious traffic accident (Roberts' newly busty shape is quite a sight in a neck brace; she looks like a caucasian Mrs. Butterworth's Syrup bottle) and trips his pity-switch for a clerking job. Smart but uneducated, she makes a big-haired splash in Mabry's office, what with her hemline and neckline poised to meet in the middle at any moment. Sorting through the file on an apparently routine real estate sale in the tiny desert burg of Hinkley, she finds some curious medical records, noses around, and eventually discovers that virtually everyone in town suffers some medical malady attributable to chemicals used at a nearby Pacific Gas & Electric plant. Moved by their plight, and invigorated to find herself for once in a position of both trust and authority, she unholsters her tireless wiles to track the paper trail of a corporate cover-up, mustering community support to take on the $28 billion company.
Though undaunted by newfound responsibility, or the trappings and personalities of the legal system, Erin finds things crumbling on the home front, her kids cracking from neglect despite the considerable romantic and domestic support of good-natured biker-next-door George (Aaron Eckhart, On Any Given Sunday). Meanwhile the entire case is poised to collapse from both PG&E machinations and the influx of too many lawyers. Will justice prevail? Will her kids hate her forever? Will George ride his Harley into the sunset? Will Julia's underwire snap and put somebody's eye out?
For once, casual profanity and a degree of immodesty seem necessary to a plot. The real Erin has a waitress cameo, and though her time onscreen is brief (and practically silent), she effectively conveys an impression that subtlety would be inappropriate. Not that the title character is two-dimensional; screenwriter Susannah Grant, who wrote the surprisingly engaging Drew Barrymore tale Ever After, as well as Sandra Bullock's upcoming sobriety exposé 28 Days, does a good job of fleshing her out -- pardon the expression. Coupled with bright, washed-out photography from Sex, Lies and Videotape director Steven Soderbergh (this film has a dusty, orangey look almost like The Road Warrior or Tombstone), Erin Brockovich is a capable technical achievement (although the score from Thomas Newman sounds like he recycled ideas from American Beauty). But it's the performance by Roberts, who continues her progression from movie star to actor, that makes it work.
Oscar quality? I wouldn't go quite that far. As for the cleavage trick, the film's costume designers will only say it's a "trade secret." Which means Bill Gates and his crew are at this moment pouring over photos and taking measurements in hope of reverse-engineering the impressive display and marketing their own version -- although putting the "Microsoft" tag on such an invention would sound rather self-defeating... B+
Get your own Free Home Page