'Rumor Has It...': Aniston gets a nice break

MomSeattle · DadSeattle · SPI · MySeattlePix · My account

Local

US/World

Sports

Business

A&E

Life

Comics

Photos

Opinion

Blogs

Buy Ads

NWsource

Friday, December 23, 2005

'Rumor Has It...': Aniston gets a nice break

By WILLIAM ARNOLD
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER MOVIE CRITIC

Is Jennifer Aniston ever going to emerge as an A list -- or even B list -- movie star?

MOVIE REVIEW

RUMOR HAS IT ...

DIRECTOR: Rob Reiner

CAST: Jennifer Aniston, Kevin Costner, Shirley MacLaine, Mark Ruffalo

RUNNING TIME: 97 minutes

RATING: PG-13 for mature thematic material, sexual content, crude humor and a drug reference

WHERE: Opens Sunday at Alderwood 7, Bellevue Galleria 11, Cinema 17, Crossroads 8, Everett , Factoria, Galaxy Monroe 12, Gateway Movies 8, Issaquah 9, Kent Station 14, Kirkland Parkplace, Longston Place 14, Marysville Cinema 14, Meridian 16, Metro, Mountlake 9, Parkway Plaza 12, Redmond Town Center, Renton Village, Woodinville 12

GRADE: B

LINKS/TRAILERS
· Official site

PHOTO GALLERY

View all photos

This is the question that has been hanging in the air ever since the TV-series "Friends" made her America's Sweetheart. Her fan base is immense, every time she sneezes it's in the tabloids, but she's yet to run away with a big-screen movie role.

Moreover, her last effort and big change-of-face vehicle, "Derailed," seems to have been a costly misstep in the direction of movie superstardom. It fared poorly at the box-office and, according to Variety, was one of the worst reviewed movies of 2005.

But the kid won't stay down, and barely one month after "Derailed," she's back in the starring role of yet another movie. And the qualified good news about "Rumor Has It ..." is that she's not half bad in it: It's the closest she has come to really nailing a movie role.

She plays Sarah, a vaguely unhappy and angst-ridden young woman in her early 30s whose New York journalism career is going nowhere and who is engaged to a young lawyer (Mark Ruffalo) who adores her but about whom she feels precious little excitement.

Returning to her Pasadena home on the occasion of her younger sister's wedding, she learns something she thinks might explain her long-standing alienation. Her family was the model for the Robinson family in the novel and 1967 movie "The Graduate."

This means that the Benjamin character played by Dustin Hoffman in the movie was seduced by her grandmother (Shirley MacLaine) and slept with her mother, now deceased, and may be, in fact, her real father. This is why she's so different from the rest of her family.

So she sets out to find the real character, Beau Burroughs (Kevin Costner), who is now a budding computer billionaire with commitment issues and an eye for young women that soon turns to the third generation of the Robinson (actually, Richelieu) family. (Yes, there's an incest theme, but it never gets out of hand.)

Now, granted, this is a fairly esoteric premise for a movie, and depends to a certain extent on the viewer's familiarity with "The Graduate." It also helps to know that Benjamin was supposed to be a golden boy, Robert Redford was the original choice to play him and Hoffman was cast very much against type.

And if the movie represents a modest rise from the long career slump of director Rob Reiner ("The Story of Us," "Alex and Emma"), all you have to do is look at Curtis Hanson's "In Her Shoes" -- the year's best family comedy, which also has MacLaine as the grandma -- to suspect it could have been better in other hands.

Even so, T. M. Griffin's script is imaginative and clever, the rather elaborate outrageous movie-buff in-joke that forms the basis of the plot (which the titles tell us was "inspired by an actual rumor") comes off, the movie gradually develops its own strange logic and it winds to an effectively teary finale.

Best of all, Aniston is thoroughly appealing. Her inner turmoil is palpable, she's endearing without seeming to be trying too hard at it, the self-consciousness that's marred so many of her other movie roles has vanished and she holds up her side of the screen quite nicely against scene-stealing old pros like MacLaine and Costner.

P-I movie critic William Arnold can be reached at 206-448-8185 or williamarnold@seattlepi.com.

Share your own review.

Be the first to post a comment!