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Film Also Opening: From Oscar to achingly bad
By STEVE PERSALL, Times Film Critic
© St. Petersburg Times
published March 20, 2003
How ironic that on a weekend when Hollywood celebrates the annual Academy Awards, three studios release films showing how far Oscar winners fall with bad career advice.
Four years ago, Gwyneth Paltrow was named best actress for Shakespeare in Love, sparking discussion that she would be the next Audrey Hepburn or Grace Kelly. Now she's settling for a dim-witted comedy such as View from the Top, playing an aspiring flight attendant. The movie's release has jumped all over the calendar, so maybe it's someone's cruel joke that director Bruno Barreto's film is opening Oscar weekend.
Preview trailers play up brief appearances by Mike Myers and Rob Lowe as if they were in every scene, a hint that any scene without them is worthless.
The second stumbling Oscar winner is Cuba Gooding Jr., who was named 1996's best supporting actor for Jerry Maguire. This weekend Gooding appears in Boat Trip, a comedy too painful to watch even in preview trailers. Gooding and Saturday Night Live star Horatio Sanz play straight men mistakenly booked on a gay cruise, leading to all the gags homophobia will allow. Roselyn Sanchez co-stars as the ship's doctor Gooding flirts with by posing gay, and Vivica A. Fox plays his stunned former girlfriend. Or perhaps that look on her face is due to being stuck in this movie.
The third fallen Oscar star is Winnie the Pooh, who claimed a best animated short award in 1969 and now plays second banana to swine in Piglet's Big Movie, an animated film Disney won't admit should head straight to home video. If you loved Jungle Book 2 . . . you need to get out to the movies more often.
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