Review

Review Date: 26-December-05
Spoiler Rating: Low
Juju Judgment: Just OK

Rumor Has It ... (2005)

It's not idle gossip to remark that Rob Reiner once made great movies ("This Is Spinal Tap," "The Sure Thing," "When Harry Met Sally ..."), and I bet few people would challenge my assertion that he has since lost his touch. His last offering was the poorly received "Alex & Emma" (2003), and this month he's trying to stuff our stockings with the dead weight of "Rumor Has It ...." Perhaps he thought the ellipsis could recapture some of Harry and Sally's spark, or that a plot that references "The Graduate" could reflect the glow of Hollywood legend. He is, sadly, mistaken. "Rumor Has It ..." is a clunky comedy/romance/finding-yourself drama which narrowly escapes lump-of-coal status by virtue of an able cast.

You can actually see the players fighting to rise above the muddle of their scripted situations. At the forefront is Jennifer Aniston as a basket case named Sarah, who has reached the age of 30 but still doesn't know who she is or where she's going. Aniston imparts a genuineness to each individual scene, but on the whole Sarah never rings true as someone who's both irresistibly attractive and fundamentally confused. Yet these two traits fuel her (supposedly) humorous and (intermittently) serious encounters after she goes home for her sister's wedding and discovers that her family inspired the events related in "The Graduate." Yes, her grandmother (Shirley MacLaine, a Christmas ham) once diddled a young man who then ran off with her mother on the eve of her parents' wedding, and that fact apparently holds the key to all of Sarah's problems. (Her sister's, too, although that side-story hardly bears mentioning.)

The men in "Rumor Has It ..." fare better than the women, largely because they aren't required to deliver randy one-liners or communicate existential doubt. Mark Ruffalo positively shines as Sarah's boyfriend, who starts out as the standard romantic-comedy fiancé (i.e., buffoon) and then morphs into the perfect human/friend/lover, which can't have been an easy task. As Beau Burroughs, the man destined to bed three generations of Sarah's house, Kevin Costner exudes an air of battered chivalry that suits him well; you almost wonder why he ever bothered with such a ditzy clan of females. Sarah is cured by coming to grips with these men and her father (Richard Jenkins), since they delineate her place in the world both past and future. However, it seems more likely that she would benefit from their example of composure, a quality which her family's X chromosome and this movie sorely lack.

Copyright © 2005 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.