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Heartbreakers film review
HEARTBREAKERS
Running time: 123 mins
Starring: Sigourney Weaver, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Gene Hackman, Ray Liotta, Jason Lee, Anne Bancroft
The art of the con has provided the inspiration for a number of classic movies: The Sting, The Grifters, House of Games, The Hustler being just a few of them. Sadly for all concerned, Heartbreakers is a far cry from any of these and is instead a weary and overlong comedy that tries far too hard and quickly becomes very annoying. It's a shame, because there are some very talented performers being wasted here.
Weaver and Love Hewitt are the central characters: a mother and daughter con team named Max and Page Conners whose ruse is to marry wealthy victims and then force them into a quickie divorce. This is illustrated in the film's opening sequence, when Max ties the knot with carshop owner Dean Cumanno (Ray Liotta). Dean may be a whizz at selling cars but is fairly naïve when it comes to affairs of the flesh. On their wedding night Max insists on dancing with everyone from the groom to all of the waiters and when they finally get to the honeymoon suite she is simply too nauseous to carry out any of her matrimonial duties. Cue the entrance of Love Hewitt, dressed to nines in an outfit that should be made illegal. The desperately horny and unfulfilled groom cannot resist her charms and wham! Dean is being sued for everything he's got after Max walks in on him in flagrante. The scheming mother and daughter team flee with the spoils and contemplate a life of luxurious retirement: after all this is the thirteenth time they have pulled off the same trick.
Thirteen being the unlucky number that it is their dreams are soon put in jeopardy as the IRS knocks on the door to reclaim a fortune in unpaid taxes. Back at square one the schemers are forced into doing one more job, and head off to Palm Beach in order to snare one final hugely wealthy victim. Their choice is tobacco billionaire William Tensy (Gene Hackman), a wheezing old geezer clearly not long for this world. Much of the rest of the movie is taken up with the various shenanigans Max and Page invent in order to trap their elderly prey.
As a basis for a movie the plot has some potential but it is let down by gags that are far too broad and often simply too unbelievable. For such practised deceivers, Max and Page have a lame collection of tricks. Samples include obtaining a hotel suite by falling over in the lobby and claiming the floor was uneven, constantly putting broken glass in their meals in order to claim them for free and a particularly dismal running joke whereby Max repeatedly hits Tensy over the head with a golf club in order to convince him that he is suffering from brain damage. It is also never explained how Max and Page, supposedly down to their last dollars, come by an array of flashy cars and fleshy dresses intended to impress their quarry.
The performances feel forced throughout: they are far from subtle and belong to the ‘look at me, aren't I hilarious' school. Only Jason Lee, who plays Love Hewitt's desultory love interest, escapes with any credibility. As for the other more established stars it's a toss-up to choose between them: Weaver and Love Hewitt are just unconvincing, Hackman seems to be playing his character as someone out of 20s slapstick, and Liotta is bug-eyed and hyperactive.
What could have been a smart and sassy comedy turns into something flat and turgid. It's hard to believe that anyone could be fooled by Max and Page, and the overall effect is a far cry from the wildly sharp comedies created by a genius such as Preston Sturges which the film knowingly and embarrassingly doffs its hat to. With gags that are telegraphed way in advance, a plot that is pretty evident from the opening scene and an ending that takes far too long to arrive, this is, if truth be told, much more of a backbreaker than anything else.
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