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We're not giving away the ending to this con game, but a rock-solid cast keeps this from being just another trick show.
By STEVE PERSALL
© St. Petersburg Times, published March 22, 2001
The key to any successful con game is personality. Good grifters can sell anything to anybody if their nice is right.
Same goes for movies that should, by all rights, turn out bad. Heartbreakers is that kind of movie, pulling the old switcheroo on viewer expectations, becoming more fun than its premise promises. By now, we really don't need another feel-good scam comedy, do we?
Thanks to a game, energetic cast and a sexy script, Heartbreakers proves there's still life in the art of the con. David Mirkin's movie adds ba-da-bing to The Sting, turning Sigourney Weaver and Jennifer Love Hewitt into a pair of Flirty Rotten Scoundrels. Everybody gets rooked except the audience.
Weaver plays Max, whose favorite scheme is marrying rich men and denying them sex, sending them into the arms of a more willing lover, and then divorcing him. The twist is that the other woman is Max's daughter, Page (Hewitt). Their latest mark, a chop-shop entrepreneur (Ray Liotta), fell for the scam hook, line and zipper.
The alimony payoff isn't enough to satisfy Page, who wants to operate on her own, or the IRS, whose investigator (Anne Bancroft) demands a huge payment to avoid fraud charges and jail. Max talks her daughter into one more rip-off, so they head to Miami searching for a suitably rich target.
William B. Tensy is an even better candidate since he looks ready to die soon after the wedding, which would mean an inheritance rather than alimony. Tensy (Gene Hackman) is a tobacco tycoon who loves his work, chain-smoking his way to a death-rattle cough. Hackman's surname is an amazing coincidence for this phlegmatic role. Nobody should be concerned about smoking appearing glamorous here.
No other details are required because Heartbreakers is one of those blind-side comedies always dropping a new twist into the mix. Too many, in fact, since the plot doubles back on itself a few times, especially in Page's sputtering romance with a beach-bar owner (Jason Lee). Mirkin and three screenwriters relentlessly try to fool us with new identities and alliances until we anticipate deceit, the sign that a scam has outlasted its effectiveness.
Yet a viewer appreciates the extra time to enjoy these actors. Heartbreakers doesn't contain much memorable dialogue, but the joy of performance displayed by everyone makes an above-average script zesty. The film succeeds in part because we don't expect these actors to be this funny.
Weaver knows this kind of broad material, but is she really considered among our finest movie comedians, even after Ghostbusters, Dave and Galaxy Quest? No, it's her dramatic work that defines our immediate perception. Same goes for Hackman, who has as many Oscars (two) as great comedies (Young Frankenstein, The Birdcage) on his long resume.
But watch them at work in the farcical framework of Heartbreakers. Weaver knows the key to comedy is keeping it real, never pushing a gag too hard. Max isn't aware that her silky put-downs and blase greed are funny, allowing moviegoers to determine that for themselves.
William, on the other hand, doesn't realize how vulgar he is, so the same audience synergy evolves. We're pulled into their characters to see how far that connection will stretch. These two pros sustain that interest for as long as they're on screen in Heartbreakers.
Even Liotta, previously a humorless actor unless he's violent, gets into the screwball swing of things. His recent bad streak of films appears to have made him eager to please, and he is livelier than ever. The pensive star of Goodfellas amuses us like a clown this time.
The revelation here is Hewitt, whose physical attributes are obvious and vital to her femme fatale role. Nothing in her teen-scream rise to stardom prepared moviegoers for the mature, sensual and flat-out hilarious side emerging in Heartbreakers. Hewitt's grasp of Page's multilevel petulance is tighter than her wardrobe and nearly as revealing. This is a star-making performance along the curvy lines of Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Let's see what Hewitt does with that potential.
Grade: B+
Director: David Mirkin
Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Gene Hackman, Ray Liotta, Jason Lee, Jeffrey Jones, Anne Bancroft, Nora Dunn
Screenplay: Robert Dunn, Paul Guay, Stephen Mazur
Rating: PG-13; sexual situations, profanity, violence
Running time: 120 min.