AMERICA'S SWEETHEARTS Dir: Joe Roth. Cast: John Cusack, Julia Roberts, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Billy Crystal, Seth Green, Stanley Tucci. Every so often, a wonderful romantic comedy will come along and charm the world. This will normally have been written by Richard Curtis. Rather more frequently, a moderately enjoyable addition to the genre will hit local multiplexes. These are generally set in American high schools. Hardly at all, in the scheme of things, does a movie quite as bad as AMERICA'S SWEETHEARTS get thrust upon our blue and pleasant planet. The plot is easy to summarise, since it's basically NOTTING HILL except that Julia Roberts is the ordinary person this time. Co-written and produced by ageing star Crystal, this feature-length experiment with smile-free humour actually has an impressive array of talent on show. All the more tragic then, that no one comes out with any credit, except perhaps serial cameo-artist Christopher Walken in a decent turn as a bonkers auteur. Roberts has a pretty thankless part, and Cusack has little to add to a character astonishingly similar to the one he played in BETTER OFF DEAD (moderately enjoyable 80s romantic comedy set in an American high school). Catherine Zeta Jones gives a totally one-note performance as Cusack's wife who's also Robert's sister. Cusack is supposedly obsessed with her, but since she's a monster throughout it's impossible to see why.

Crystal tries to steal the show as a publicist trying to pretend to the world's media that Cusack and Zeta Jones have been reconciled, but since he doesn't give himself any decent lines, this blatant attempt to kick-start a deservedly ailing career fails disastrously. In fact, the script is absolutely terrible and is probably, along with Roth's leaden direction, the single biggest reason for this film's abject failure. None of the characters or their actions make any sense, and because of this everything happens for no particular reason and what you get is a series of random events leading to a climax a staggeringly improbable climax. Remember the press conference at the conclusion of NOTTING HILL? Well AMERICA'S SWEETHEARTS tries the same trick and then attempts to out-do it, with an end result that the big romantic climax is utterly bewildering and not in the least bit touching. Conclusive proof that this movie sucks worse than a hole in a spaceship is its extraordinary portrayal of non-Whites. The presentation of a greedy Indian Guru, played by a blacked up Alan Arkin, is really quite staggering in it's Ain't Half Hot Mum racism. This is proved to be no accident by the subsequent characterization of Zeta Jones Spanish lover, played actually quite well by Hank Azaria, who does for the Hispanic peoples what Al Jolson did for African Americans. Julia Roberts is also guilty of extremely poor taste, as her character is shown in flash-backs as being quite overweight, and therefore, naturally, totally unattractive. So, as propaganda for White Supremacists or Body Fascists, AMERICA'S SWEETHEARTS works quite nicely. It'a a shame that on every other level it fails utterly. Profoundly awful. Chris Denton.

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