42 lines
4.7 KiB
Plaintext
42 lines
4.7 KiB
Plaintext
the swirling sick feeling hit me just a few minutes into " heartbreakers . "
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ray liotta's character was making out with his secretary when his new wife knocked on the door of his office .
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while scrambling to collect himself , he frantically shouted to her , " just wait a sex ? er , i mean sec ! "
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i was struck by a wave of revulsion , thinking , " geez , didn't lines like that die when 'three's company' was canceled ? "
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over the next few minutes , as the barely double entendres and lingering cleavage shots grew more numerous , i realized that the mindset behind " heartbreakers " predated " three's company . "
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suddenly , i had an out-of-body experience as my internal way-back machine swept me to the mid-1960s .
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all across america , the counter-culture was growing like wildfire , but there was scant evidence of it on tv .
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while young people were challenging traditional values on the streets , frustrated teenagers like me were stuck at home , sulking while our parents enjoyed the latest bob hope special .
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women in skimpy bathing suits would prance onscreen while hope made growling noises and leered at their breasts .
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on another channel , dean martin made wisecracks about " booze and broads " and peter lawford , decked out in love beads and a nehru jacket , purred suggestive one-liners as he ogled the go-go dancers .
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the adults laughed and laughed .
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" heartbreakers " reeks of that stagnant mentality , from its lingering shots of jennifer love hewitt's vah-vah-voom breasts to its leaden screenplay , which paints women as haughty schemers and men as drooling buffoons too sex-obsessed to realize they are being manipulated .
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in addition to liotta and hewitt , the cast includes sigourney weaver , gene hackman , jason lee , nora dunn and anne bancroft .
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i can't imagine what drew performers of their caliber to this project .
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perhaps they thought it was a parody of the sniggering sex comedies of the '60s .
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if so , they were sadly mistaken .
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the story revolves around a mother-daughter con-team .
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it opens with the marriage of max ( weaver ) to dean ( liotta ) , a new jersey chop shop operator .
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having withheld sex until the honeymoon , max pretends to pass out on their wedding night .
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the next morning , she feigns illness , sending a very horny dean off to the office , where he ends up in the arms of his new secretary .
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just as the two are about to get overtly physical , max bursts into the room and catches them .
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the " horrified " bride dissolves the union , garnering a healthy cash settlement along the way .
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of course , the secretary was really her daughter page ( hewitt ) and the whole thing was a set-up .
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the women move on , but an irs agent ( bancroft ) catches up with them and demands a huge amount of money to cover unpaid taxes .
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in desperate need of funds , max and page head for palm beach to replay the scam .
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their mark this time is william b . tensy ( hackman , in hideous make-up ) , a decrepit tobacco tycoon obsessed with the joys of smoking .
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max starts to put the game into action , but page is so repelled by the old man ( and angry with her mom ) that she slips off to enact her own score , targeting jack , a laid back young beach bar owner who is worth a fortune .
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complications arise when page realizes that good-natured jack is stirring actual emotions in her steely little heart .
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as if that wasn't enough , dean reappears on the scene with revenge on his mind .
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the attempt to weld a romance onto a caper comedy served only to remind me of the infinitely superior " a fish called wanda . "
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i won't bother to compare the two .
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suffice to say that everything done right in " wanda " is done wrong here .
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" heartbreakers " is soulless , inept and , at 123 minutes , at least a half-hour too long .
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sigourney weaver and jennifer love hewitt throw themselves into their parts , but have nowhere to go with the metallic characters .
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gene hackman is utterly wasted in a one-note , one-joke part that has him doing nothing but smoking , coughing and waxing rhapsodic about smoking and sex .
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poor jason lee is stuck in the ingenue role and the normally charismatic actor comes off as merely bland .
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ray liotta manages to squeeze a tiny bit of humanity and humor into his walking clich ? , but only a bit .
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the low point in the film has weaver employing a russian accent bad enough to make boris and natasha wince , while doing half-assed slapstick with a broken off penis from a statue .
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bear in mind , though , that this is merely the worst segment of a movie made up of nothing but low points .
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if you remember bob hope specials with fondness , this might be your cup of tea .
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as for me , i'm going to watch " a fish called wanda " now and try to forget i ever saw " heartbreakers . "
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