America's Sweethearts

John Cusack should fire his agent and maybe kick him in the balls for even suggesting he take the role of Eddie Thomas in this impressively stupid "romantic" "comedy." Cusack stars as the cuckolded husband of horribly spoiled screen queen Gwen Harrison (the no-talent Catherine Zeta-Jones-Douglas). He must reunite with her to salvage the upcoming release of their final movie together, Time Over Time. Co-writer and producer Billy Crystal does a glib walk-thru as Lee Phillips, the studio publicist who's trying to salvage his job by organizing a press junket for the film, despite the fact that no one has seen it yet. You see, the film's director is a bit touched (What's this? Christopher Walken playing a nutjob? Getouttahere!), and won't allow any studio scum to view it before it's shown at a remote Nevada resort to provincial entertainment reporters from the hinterlands. Tucson's own junket lickspittle, Fox 11's Jim Ferguson, has a brief cameo (don't blink). Cusack is at first completely overwrought in his lovesickness, but then miraculously regains his Everyman-style composure in time to see that he's really in love with Gwen's formerly zaftig sister Kiki. That listless performance by Julia Roberts is evidence that even she knows Sweethearts is a dog. And, as if to bite the hand that feeds her, Roberts gallingly insults her most loyal audience-- verweight white females--by donning this year's blackface, a fatsuit. Message? Lose the blubber and the leading man will be yours. That's healthy. Avoid this like the middlebrow plague that it is.