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Ray Liotta, Jennifer Love Hewitt and Jason Lee offer
little in the way of comedy in Heartbreakers.
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Sigourney Weaver's trademark character, Alien movies heroine Ellen Ripley, is nowhere to be found. Standing in her place is the wealthy Russian emigrée, Ulga Yevanova. She might not know any traditional Russian folk songs, but the patrons at Palm Beach's Kremlin Restaurant will attest that she sings a wicked version of The Beatles' "Back in the USSR."
Director David Mirkin's screwball comedy Heartbreakers confirms Weaver can play just about anything. In addition to Ulga, she's Angela Nardino, a virginal bride who keeps her anxious groom Dean Cumanno (Ray Liotta) waiting on their wedding night. Ulga and Angela are both characters concocted by veteran con artist Max Connors (Weaver). Basically, Max makes her living by tricking rich men out of their money.
Weaver lets it all hang out in Heartbreakers. Her height (5 feet 11 inches) and sharp features are pushed aside in favor of curves and sexy flirtations. Weaver gets to play the vamp, and Heartbreakers is a better film because of it. Unfortunately, Weaver's comic spunk isn't enough to prevent Heartbreakers from losing steam.
Max's partner-in-crime is her own teen-age daughter, Page (Jennifer Love Hewitt). They have a regular routine. Max marries the men. Then, Page seduces them into bed. Their payoff arrives in the form of a quick divorce settlement.
Everything Max and Page do is a con. They even scam their way into a free hotel suite. It's impressive what a shove and some spilled water can do.
"It had to look real, honey," Max tells Page, after pushing her to the lobby floor. "It looks fake when you know it's coming."
After relocating to Palm Beach, cigarette tycoon William B. Tensy (Gene Hackman) becomes Max and Page's latest target. Everything is on schedule until Page falls in love with a local bartender (Jason Lee). Suddenly, her newfound conscience jeopardizes her mother's big-money con.
The affluent Miami setting creates a stylistic bond between Heartbreakers and the 1959 Billy Wilder comedy, Some Like It Hot. Unfortunately, Heartbreakers suffers by comparison. As a writer on TV's The Simpsons and The Larry Sanders Show, as well as the director of the underrated 1997 film Romy and Michele's High School Reunion, Mirkin has a knack for knowing what's funny. So it's puzzling why he frequently shifts the story away from the hilarious Weaver only to focus on a giggly dullard like Hewitt.
Hewitt is famously buxom. That's part of the film's gag. Her outfits are skimpy. Every shot is a jiggle shot. It's as if Heartbreakers wants audiences to stare at Hewitt's breasts. But her clean-teen personality ultimately breaks through, and it's hard to accept a clean teen as a conniving sex-pot, no matter how large her breasts are.
By the end of Heartbreakers, Hewitt dumps her bad girl persona and reverts to her wholesome teen-age character from TV's Party of Five and its spin-off, The Time of Your Life. Inevitably, Heartbreakers loses its cynical edge whenever Weaver is absent from the screen. It's clear Hewitt is too goody-goody for a sarcastic caper film like Heartbreakers. Her big chance to play dirty is a huge failure. When the vampy Page gets her hair caught in a married man's zipper, Hewitt manages to make the gag look not the least bit naughty.
Hackman is a colorful foil as the wheezing Tensy. It's funny how his every word is accompanied by a puff of smoke. But Lee and Liotta offer few comic diversions as the men in the lives of Heartbreakers' female grifters. Their reappearance late in the film proves Heartbreakers is approximately 20 minutes too long.
I suppose most people still think of Weaver as action-gal Ripley from the four Alien movies. But Heartbreakers proves she is also a great comic. In films like Working Girl and Dave, Weaver triumphed as a sophisticated straight-woman who bore the brunt of the shenanigans around her. Heartbreakers grants her a mischievous role closer in slapstick spirit to her airhead sitcom actress in Galaxy Quest and the possessed cellist in Ghostbusters.
Weaver is not a typical Hollywood-leading lady, and that's what I like about her. Her image as the cultured, hyper-intelligent East Coast WASP is cemented in dramas like The Ice Storm and Copy Cat. Time magazine described her best: "Dom Perignon in a town built to sell Dr. Pepper."
But Weaver's aristocratic demeanor is cleverly tweaked by Heartbreakers. Her broad forehead and chiseled cheekbones are put to comic use. It's an impressive makeover. Heartbreakers gives Weaver the opportunity to play the seductress by emphasizing her curves instead of her height and angles. In Heartbreakers, Weaver doesn't have to play small or act petite. She gets to let it all hang out. But even in a slapstick comedy like Heartbreakers, she is too clever to make a fool of herself. She is anything but a bimbo.
Weaver has done comedy well before, but Heartbreakers gives her the chance to push her clownish potential. My disappointment is that her performance doesn't result in a better movie. There are times when I consider Weaver's "Back to the USSR" routine alone worth the price of admission. If Heartbreakers would only get rid of that perky Hewitt, then it would be a movie worthy of its screwball intentions.CityBeat grade: C.
