|
Entertainment
Hearty laugh at Hollywood foibles
|
On rare occasions, the joke is on Hollywood itself — and the result has been an affectionate look at the crazy world of movie making. ANAND PARTHASARATHY examines the latest entrant in the genre, ``America's Sweethearts", and recalls some past films which turned the spotlight on themselves.
|
John Cusack, Julia Roberts and Catherine Zeta-Jones... the unusual casting has triggered great expectations.
CANDID SELF-ASSESSMENT does not come easily to creative people. And when the pool of creativity is as big as Hollywood, it is all the more difficult to bring together a team of film professionals, who are ready to expose their life style to the public's critical gaze.
Sometimes, the best way is to play it for laughs — as Julia Roberts should know: In 1999, she starred in ``Notting Hill", a comedy set in the U.K. where she plays a hot-shot American movie star on holiday. But Hollywood's resident ``Pretty Woman''(and the highest paid one at that) is nothing, if not adventurous. In her latest film, she shuns the obvious role of the temperamental, conceited film star. That goes to Welsh-born actress Catherine Zeta-Jones.
Ms. Roberts prefers to play the star's younger sister — and her harassed personal assistant. Her job it is to bolster the carefully cultivated (and entirely spurious) image of her sister and her co-star (John Cusack) as ``America's Sweethearts". Reality is something different: after umpteen films together, the twosome are estranged. But the compulsion to promote their last film together, demands that they reunite lovingly, one last time, and rub shoulders with the media on a Press junket. To achieve this bogus bonhomie, the company recalls an aging and about-to-be-sacked publicity agent, played by Billy Crystal (better known as a long-time host of the Oscar Awards show). But their real agni asthra is the star's sibling, who plays a meek doormat, ready to be imposed upon and dominated by the harridan of a film star.
All this is hardly the stuff of inspired fun — so the writers add a twist: even as the male star separates from his wife, he is drawn to her kid sister. But the estranged wife has found compensation of her own -- her latest Spanish co-star ( Hank Azaria). It is a masala mix of emotions that is milked for a few laughs and a few snide asides at Hollywood's hyper-strung way of running its business. But is it enough? Some critics have dismissed the proceedings as ``just as bogus and hollow as the movie business it portrays". Others have drawn attention to the delicious irony that the studio which has released ``America's Sweethearts", Columbia, was itself involved in the type of hanky panky that it lampoons: only a few a months ago, it emerged that some of the glowing reviews that were quoted about an earlier product were bogus and attributed to a non-existent critic. Sometimes the truth can catch up with snide fiction.
For both Ms. Roberts and Ms. Zeta-Jones, the film comes at a key moment in their almost parallel careers. Julia Roberts, the older by two years, did nothing noteworthy till the Richard Gere-starring Cinderella story,``Pretty Woman'' rocketed her to the top slot a decade ago. In recent months, Indian cinema goers have seen her hold her own beside Susan Sarandon, in the family weepy,``Stepmom"; take on a huge public utility in a real-life pollution case in the Oscar winning ``Erin Brockovich" and rejoin Gere after a decade in the unlikely comedy,``Runaway Bride". She also exhibited her readiness to do downbeat roles, when she played the fiancee of the Irish freedom fighter ``Michael Collins'' in the 1996 film.
Sweethearts undoubtedly... Catherine Zeta-Jones and Billy Crystal.
Catherine Zeta-Jones, came to the big screen via the small: a role in ``Darling Buds of May", a hit British comedy serial in the early 1990s, made her an instantly recognisable face in her native land. But she had to wait for her 1998 role as the spunky daughter of fellow-Briton Anthony Hopkins in ``The Mask of Zorro'', to reach a global audience. She followed it with another action yarn — albeit set in modern times — in ``Entrapment'' opposite Sean Connery. The sparks between the two Celtic stars (he is Scottish) made this one of the big entertainers of 1999. Like Roberts, Zeta-Jones has also been shrewd enough to do a more downbeat role or two — indeed many viewers thought her performance as a drug lord's wife in ``Traffic'' this year, deserved an Oscar. But at 32, she still has time (at least when she can get away from new husband Michael Douglas and their 14-month old child, Dylan).
Celebrities galore... Julia Roberts and Catherine Zeta-Jones with John Cusack and Billy Crystal in "America's Sweethearts".
A shrewd critic has suggested that ``America's Sweethearts'' is nothing but a canny if less inspired updating of that classic "movie-within-a-movie", the 1952 musical,``Singin' in the Rain". Think of Julia in the Debbie Reynolds role; Cusack as Gene Kelly and Catherine as the silly super star played by Jean Hagen .... and the idea takes new meaning.
In more recent years, Hollywood has been lampooned in Robert Altman's biting ``Player''(1992), where Tim Robbins plays a sleazy studio executive; and in the hilarious Eddie Murphy vehicle "Bowfinger''(1999), where he plays a double role as a star and his``dupe". But for many veteran movie lovers, the epitome of ``Hollywood on Hollywood'' has been the 1937``A Star is Born'' starring Frederick March as an actor going downhill even as his wife (Janet Gaynor) is on the way up. James Mason and Judy Garland reprised the roles when the film was remade in 1954 and the singing star of the 1970s Barbara Streisand was joined by Kris Kristofferson in the third and final 1976 version. The lifestyles of the rich and famous (who also happen to be artistes) has long held a strange fascination for moviegoers. It is something that transcends language and culture (remember Amitabh Bachchan and Jaya Bhaduri in ``Abhimaan"?).
But when it comes to Hollywood, a critic once said, ``It's fascination all right— but it's the same old fascination of a snake pit".
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Entertainment
|
