Thursday, September 3, 2015

Heartbreakers (2001)

Director: David Mirkin

Writers: Robert Dunn, Paul Guay, Stephen Mazur

Composer: John Debney

Starring: Sigourney Weaver, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Ray Liotta, Jason Lee, Anne Bancroft, Jeffrey Jones, Gene Hackman, Nora Dunn, Julio Oscar Mechoso, Ricky Jay, Sarah Silverman, Zach Galifianakis, Carrie Fisher, Jack Shearer, Kevin Nealon

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Caution: Dangerous Curves Ahead

Plot: A mother and daughter con team seduce and scam wealthy men.



My rating: 7.5/10

Will I watch it again? Sure.

Everyone in this thing is hilarious but it was Liotta and Hackman that stole the show for my money.  These guys were brilliantly funny.  It's been a dozen or more years since I saw this but it was funnier this time around.  I loved it.  It's not without flaws.  The foley work is spotty, sometimes going too far with the cartoonish sounds like when Page (Hewitt) falls in the mud.  It literally sounds like a cartoon. I'm sure it was a deliberate choice but it felt like it was too much.  The comedy in this picture is all over the place.  There's enough farcical moments sprinkled throughout to go for the slapstick laughs but there's a lot more to it.  I guess it'd be easy to nitpick this but it's clearly over the top so you can't get too involved by comparing this to reality.  For being a two hour comedy (!!!) it moves pretty quickly.  The only thing that slowed the picture down was when Max (Weaver) is singing with the band.  That went on way too long and I wasn't laughing.  I also wasn't given final cut approval.  No one bothered to contact me at all now that I think about it.  Anyway, it's a really funny movie that has enough belly laughs to ease the slower, dramatic sections.  Ray Liotta kills me in this.  He should do more comedy.  The MGM DVD has got more extras than you'd think for this picture.  There are two commentaries (one with the director and one with him and Weaver and Hewitt), a making of freaturette (22 minutes), another featurette focusing on the funny (12 minutes), 23 minutes of deleted scenes and trailers for this film (anamorphic wide) and THE PRINCESS BRIDE (fullscreen trailer for the DVD release).

No comments:

Post a Comment