America's Sweethearts: Press views

The wrong movie at the wrong time?

Press reviews of America's Sweethearts.

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The Independent

America's Sweethearts turns out to be one of those films that operates at the lowest possible level of interest without actually plunging you into boredom. The problem is that it lacks either the snap of satire or the giddiness of screwball.

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The Guardian

It's all rollicking good fun, though I wasn't sure about Hank Azaria's comedy Latino accent (he does far funnier voices in The Simpsons). In the end, Crystal, that seasoned Oscar host, can't quite bring himself to skewer the movie biz, so he ends up soft-pedalling the Hollywood satire in favour of light-hearted romance.

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The Sunday Times

America's Sweethearts just doesn't have enough charm, heart and humour to make us forgive its failings. Zeta-Jones and Cusack give us caricatures of Hollywood types instead of authentic characters. Only Roberts emerges unscathed from this satire past its sell-by date.

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The Observer

The press interviews were funnier and handled infinitely better in Notting Hill, and screenwriter Crystal, like a cardsharp dealing himself all the aces, gives his own character the best lines and the sharp put-downs. He leaves the rest of the cast to sink in their own bluster. Worst served is Julia Roberts as Zeta-Jones's supposedly ugly sister. The authors' satirical teeth are made of marshmallow and massage the Hollywood hands that feed them.

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The Daily Telegraph

Initially, we may greet the film's savvy, insider humour with a rictus of recognition. But as it wears on, one comes to feel as imprisoned as its leads in their constricted, trivial universe, and as helpless to escape as those journalists, holed up in paid-for luxury out in the desert. Only a churl would deny that America's Sweethearts has its moments. It's just the wrong movie at the wrong time.

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The Times

At times the tone hovers uncertainly between scathing satire and warm-hearted parody, and the humorous impact of some of the scenes suffers accordingly. But Roberts is as appealing as ever as Kiki, sister and abused PA to Gwen, and the latter is splendidly played by Zeta-Jones as one of the most vanity-stricken harridans ever to have stalked a red carpet.

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London Evening Standard

Starring and co-written by Billy Crystal, it makes a misguided attempt to combine a traditional romantic comedy with a satire on the backstage politics of Hollywood. The result is a banal, tedious insider movie that has all the "universal" relevance of a vanity project.