For a while in “Rumor Has It …” it feels as though director Rob Reiner is back in his “When Harry Met Sally …” mode, right down to the ellipsis in the title. This film starts out funny and sassy – and then makes a serious wrong turn halfway through.
The setting is Pasadena, Calif., and as a rapid-fire prologue informs us, Pasadena has an unusual footnote in the cultural history of the ’60s. In the early 1960s, it was rumored that Charles Webb’s novel “The Graduate” (and the movie that came from it) were based on a true local legend about a young guy who got seduced by his girlfriend’s mother. You remember the movie, with Dustin Hoffman: “Mrs. Robinson, you’re trying to seduce me … aren’t you?”
Pasadena girl Sarah Huttinger (Jennifer Aniston) has never heard the story, apparently. When she and her boyfriend (Mark Ruffalo) come home to Pasadena for the wedding of her sister (Mena Suvari), it’s the first time she gets wind of the true tale behind “The Graduate.”
The problem is, she thinks her grandmother (Shirley MacLaine) might have been the real “Mrs. Robinson,” which means that Sarah’s late mother was the girlfriend. The timing of her mother’s affair makes Sarah wonder: Could Dustin Hoffman – well, the real guy – have possibly been Sarah’s biological father? That would explain her lifelong misfit feelings.
Now she needs to find the man who slept with two generations of her maternal ancestors. He’s Beau Burroughs (Kevin Costner), some kind of computer tycoon, and needless to say he’s bewildered by Sarah’s arrival on the scene.
| Missed opportunity: The amusing opening reels suggest that director Rob Reiner is back in his “When Harry Met Sally” mode, as Jennifer Aniston suspects her parents might have been involved in the real-life story of “The Graduate.” The movie flubs the premise halfway through and never recovers.
Rated: PG-13 rating is for language, subject matter Now showing: Alderwood 7, Everett 9, Galaxy 12, Marysville 14, Mountlake 9, Stanwood, Meridian 16, Metro, Woodinville 12, Cascade |
So far so good – Reiner keeps the film bopping along, some of the jokes are swell, and Jennifer Aniston has the right plucky-cranky quality to carry us through the story. Richard Jenkins, always an honest actor (he’s in “Fun with Dick and Jane” and “North Country”), is strong as Sarah’s father, and Kathy Bates has a boffo cameo part (unbilled).
But the encounter between Sarah and Beau sends the movie in a new and really sort of creepy direction, and it never recovers its footing. The champagne buzz goes flat almost immediately (not aided by Costner’s seemingly impervious sense of self-satisfaction).
The idea of revisiting the real-life counterparts of famous fictional characters is intriguing. When Shirley MacLaine sashays onto the screen as the real (now much older) Mrs. Robinson, a very interesting door opens. “Rumor Has It …” then moves in a different direction, but I’d like to know what’s through that door.
Associated Press
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