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AMERICA'S SWEETHEARTS
A Sony Pictures Entertainment release of a Columbia Pictures and Revolution Studios presentation of a Roth/Arnold and Face production. Produced by Billy Crystal, Susan Arnold, Donna Arkoff Roth. Executive producers, Charles Newirth, Peter Tolan. Co-producers, Allegra Clegg, Bruce A. Block.
Directed by Joe Roth. Screenplay, Billy Crystal, Peter Tolan. Camera (Deluxe color, Panavision widescreen), Phedon Papamichael; editor, Stephen A. Rotter music, James Newton Howard; music supervisor, Kathy Nelson; production designer, Garreth Stover, senior art director, Chris Cornwell; art director, Denise L. Dugally; set designers, Barbara Mesney, Colin De Ronin, Beck Taylor set decorator, Larry Dias; costume designers, Ellen Mirojnick, Jeffrey Kurland; sound (Dolby Digital/DTS/SDDS), Robert Eber, supervising sound editor, David Giammarco; visual effects, Sony Pictures Imageworks; visual effects supervisor, Carey Grant Villegas; special makeup effects, Keith VanderLaan's Captive Audience Prods., Greg Cannom; associate producer, Samantha Sprecher; assistant director, Geoff Hansen; casting, Junie Lowry-Johnson, Libby Goldstein. Reviewed at Charles Aidikoff screening room, Beverly Hills, July 6,2001. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 102 MIN.
Kid Harrison .................... Julia Roberts Lee Phillips ........................ Billy Crystal Gwen Harrison ......Catherine Zeta-Jones Eddie Thomas ................John Cusack Hector ..........................Hank Azaria Dave Kingman ................Stanley Thci Hal Weidmann......Christopher Walken Wellness Guide ..................Alan Arkin Danny Wax ......................Seth Green Davis ...................................... Scot Zeller
'SWEET' DOESN'T CRYSTALIZE
More topical about Hollywood celebrity culture than it ever intended - and perhaps a bit discomfiting right now for its uber-celebrity leading lady - "America's Sweethearts" begins as a smartly promising, gently farcical comedy of manners and ends as sourly and haphazardly as the lives it's poking fun at. Repping the return of former Disney chief and current Revolution Studios head Joe Roth to a perch he occupied a decade ago behind the camera, pic is the ultimate in contemporary Hollywood selfawareness and, to its detriment, self-ridicule, even as it assembles the kind of cast perhaps only a studio topper could manage.
While the premise of a studio-contrived reconciliation of the town's biggest star couple (separated after being married to each other) in order to promote their latest co-starring vehicle is redolent with potential, this showbiz affair, first gracefully, then desperately, tries to revive parts of various classic Hollywood comedy traditions, from Preston Sturges' onthe-road character adventures to Ernst Lubitsch's elegant wars between the sexes to Elaine May's...