Sweethearts satirise film industry

Three is a crowd: Cusack, Zeta Jones and Roberts

Two of Hollywood's biggest female stars, Julia Roberts and Catherine Zeta Jones, share the limelight in their latest film. The BBC's entertainment correspondent Tom Brook reports from New York.

One of the stranger scenes in Hollywood's new romantic comedy America's Sweethearts takes place when Julia Roberts and Catherine Zeta-Jones appear in a scene in bed together as sisters.

It is a disconcerting twist of reality to find Roberts playing second-fiddle in the role of subservient assistant to an insecure movie star who simultaneously hugs and needles her in an effort to get her to carry out a favour.

I don't have a big entourage, but obviously I have the people that you usually have

Catherine Zeta Jones

The movie star is Gwen, played by Catherine Zeta-Jones and Roberts is Kiki, her sister and trusted aide, who caters to her every whim and self-indulgent need.

For Zeta-Jones it was great fun to play a role in which she bosses Julia Roberts around. She says, "someone's got to do it. I had a ball. I really did, with Julia Roberts as my assistant!"

The premise of this comedy is that the constantly coddled Gwen has to be persuaded by her sister, acting in concert with a studio publicist, to appear to have reconciled with her estranged husband in the interest of promoting a movie in which they both star.

'Nice monster'

For much of the film Roberts, who wore a fat-suit, is the ugly duckling, the doormat to her sister's incessant demands.

Zeta-Jones says her character is a "nice monster" that you can't hate, even though she thinks she is the centre of the universe.

Billy Crystal joins Zeta Jones and Roberts at the première

The actress claims in reality she doesn't resemble the diva-like star she plays.

She says: "I am not like that. There may be others who may contradict me, but I have a really nice team around me.

"I don't have a big entourage, but obviously I have the people that you usually have and I just like to do the job and get home."

Roberts jokingly claims she too has no diva-like tendencies either, but adds: "I long for them. They are coming. I promise you they are coming!"

Real life

America's Sweethearts is set at a press junket and Billy Crystal, as the film's publicist, is desperately trying to orchestrate events to ensure that the reality of Gwen and Eddie's broken marriage remains hidden.

Julia Roberts found in real life she was doing the very same thing at the America's Sweethearts press junket I recently attended in New York.

Cusack and Zeta Jones play an on-screen couple

It was held just a few days before the world learned that Roberts romantic involvement with actor Benjamin Bratt was over, and in a tour-de-force performance the Oscar winning actress managed not to reveal the split had taken place.

I asked Roberts if she ever tried to present a false reality at a press junket, to which she replied jokingly: "Of course, I'm doing it right now!"

She explained, at these promotional junkets, where scores of journalists ask about her latest movie role and her relationship with co-stars, she has found herself making some descriptive adjustments.

Tensions

She says that "movies that aren't that great are 'fabulous' and people that have been a pain for four months become 'the nicest person you ever met'".

Roberts and Zeta-Jones, good as they were, just become glamorous fluff

Tom Brook

The on-screen dynamic between Zeta-Jones and Roberts works quite well.

There have been reports of tensions on the America's Sweethearts set between the actresses but, predictably, if there was any, neither of them gave any hint of it at the junket.

In America's Sweethearts Gwen and her movie star husband Eddie, played by John Cusack, are the focus of intense media scrutiny.

Catherine Zeta-Jones knows only too well what that is like, because ever since her involvement with Michael Douglas became public her life has been lived inside a fishbowl.

She says she finds the escalating media interest in celebrities excessive: "Now, we want to know who you slept with last night, and we want to know the gory details, whether it was good or not. It has become part of our culture."

Disjointed

America's Sweethearts touches on some fascinating issues: celebrity obsession, Hollywood's deceptive publicity practices, and movie stars' investment in promoting a false image.

Unfortunately, none of these matters is adequately explored in a film that fails as a sharp entertaining satire of contemporary Hollywood customs and practice.

It was a missed opportunity, and Roberts and Zeta-Jones, good as they were, just become glamorous fluff in a movie that resembles a series of increasingly disjointed comic pratfalls.