There are few subjects Hollywood enjoys ridiculing more than Hollywood. And there are few people better positioned or equipped to do the ridiculing than Billy Crystal whose career has encompassed most roles both sides of the camera. Here he wears his screenwriter, producer and actor hats with varying degrees of success.
While his portrayal of the unctuous publicity agent Lee Phillips is consistently amusing, his reunion with writing partner Peter Tolan fails to yield the same hilarious results as their previous collaboration, Analyze This. America's Sweethearts takes a great cast, a good premise and a promising opening and then sadly wastes them all as it degenerates into a nonsensical farce.
During the course of their nine films together, the married couple of Gwen Harrison (Zeta-Jones) and Eddie Thomas (Cusack) has firmly established itself as America's sweethearts. However, with the imminent release of their latest film Time Over Time, directed by the legendary and not a little eccentric Hal Weidmann (Walken), the pair has gone their separate ways. The self obsessed Harrison has taken up with the flamboyant Spaniard Hector (played to camp extreme by Azaria), while Eddie's search to find himself takes him to a wellness ashram run by the transcendentally spaced-out Alan Arkin.
Trying to reunite the two to help promote the film is the problem faced by the belittling studio head Dave Kingman (Tucci), who rescinds his earlier decision to fire Phillips as he's the one man capable of getting the temperamental Harrison to appear at the press junket. The occasion will also serve as the film's premiere as Heidmann, who has been holed up for months editing in the shed of Unibomber Ted Kaczynski, has refused to show the suits at the studio any footage.
To this mix is added the not inconsiderable presence of Julia Roberts who plays the unlikely role of Gwen's dowdy sister and personal assistant Kiki. More likely is the fact that things between Eddie, Gwen and Kiki start to get complicated.
As always with Crystal's scripts, there are plenty of laughs, in this case mostly at the expense of the neurotic and egotistical types that saturate the movie business. But by using them all as broad targets at which to aim his humour, he transforms them from real people into two-dimensional caricatures. Only Cusack refrains from going too far and in so doing offers a glimmer of what might have been. The film's eagerness to please is at the expense of credulity, making it difficult to care for its outcome. With such a wealth of talent on board, it's a sad indictment that the biggest laugh in America's Sweethearts comes courtesy of a crotch-sniffing dog.
