Rumor Has It - Austin American-Statesman movie review

'Rumor Has It...' never graduates to interesting

By JOHN DeFORE
Austin American-Statesman

Rumor has it that Rob Reiner hasn't made a good movie in more than a decade, and hasn't done very well with romantic comedy since 1989's "When Harry Met Sally..."

Because it's more than a rumor that Reiner was hired early in this film's production to replace a fired director (Ted Griffin, who wrote the script), rumormongers have to wonder: How bad did the producers have to think "Rumor Has It..." was going to be to ask Rob Reiner to save their necks?

Warner Brothers Pictures

'Rumor Has It'

2 out of 5 stars

Director: Rob Reiner
Starring: Jennifer Aniston, Kevin Costner, Shirley MacLaine, Mark Ruffalo, Richard Jenkins
Run time: 96 minutes
Release date: Dec. 25, 2005
Rating: PG-13 for mature thematic material, sexual content, crude humor and a drug reference.
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(Maybe they just thought Reiner was the go-to guy for films with ellipses after their titles.)

Whether Griffin was fired because he couldn't do the job or just because he wasn't making star Jennifer Aniston look sexy enough (Reiner and crew are conspicuous in getting that task right), the finished product doesn't have the stink of disaster one might expect. It just isn't very interesting.

That's something of a surprise, as the film's premise achieves the unlikely task of being derivative and original at the same time. Years ago, the idea of making a sequel to "The Graduate" was a joke — a nasty comment on Hollywood's lack of ideas. But Griffin found a way to make it clever: Here, Aniston plays a woman who discovers that the film (rather, the book that inspired the film) was based on her family.

We might never know what Griffin intended to do with this good idea, because — yes, rumor has it — Reiner had the script reworked by an uncredited writer when he came aboard. But one likes to think that such an idea deserved to be better exploited. Here, after a promising set-up at a family gathering where Aniston accidentally learns of the skeleton in the closet, the action hops over to San Francisco, so she and Kevin Costner (who plays the Dustin Hoffman role, having had flings with both Aniston's mother and her grandmother) can go through some very familiar motions: He's rich and good-looking, she's emotionally confused and reluctant to commit to her wonderful fiance (Mark Ruffalo, who really deserves more interesting roles); if there's not enough material in "The Graduate" to mine, the filmmakers can go rent "Pretty Woman" or "Indecent Proposal."

The movie more or less flatlines in this midsection. When we make it back to Aniston's home in Pasadena, we realize why: When Shirley MacLaine isn't onscreen, there's simply no reason to pay attention. As the grandmother in question (the inspiration for Anne Bancroft's "Graduate" role), MacLaine is so deliciously nasty you can see why someone would turn her into a cinematic icon. She can hardly read a line of dialogue without making everything around her look as plain as Pasadena Wonder Bread.

Rumor has it that some moviegoers would happily pay money to see a movie in which MacLaine was the star, not the second banana to some young but generic Hollywood hottie.