Cheap Rumor Has It... (Widescreen Edition) (DVD) (Rob Reiner) Price

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Customer Reviews of Rumor Has It... (Widescreen Edition)

Lemon Incest
Ludicrous and famously troubled vanity production for Friends star Jennifer Aniston collapses all around her just like her marriage to Brad Pitt. You can see the cracks in the plot open up like chasms after an earthquake, and whole storylines just get lost forever. One director after another tried fixing up the results, it must have been enormously expensive, and finally they brought in Rob Reiner to polish it all up. Wonder why poor Kathy Bates, in a honey blonde wig, had only one scene to play? I forget what her name is in the movie, but whatever it is she's playing "Exposition." It's up to her to shoulder the whole burden of the back story, including keeping the treasured high school yearbooks from the 1950s. <
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>The scenarists had also to backdate the storyline by ten or twelve years, so that in the present day, it's 1990 or 1992--the early days of the coming internet revolution. (And yet all the actors have the hairstyles and outfits of today.) Why? because otherwise the plot would have Jennifer Aniston playing a woman of 40 or so, and that just wouldn't have been very cute for poor Jennifer. Because she was supposed to be the daughter born to the real life originals of the "Elaine" and "Benjamin" characters in THE GRADUATE, forever fixed as a mid-sixties book and movie. It's like a giant jack inserted underneath a flat tire of a movie, this shift back to an earlier time, and yet still there's remnants of a plot in which Jennifer Aniston accidentally pockets Mark Ruffalo's cell phone. <
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>Didn't you think she was going to find, like Brittany Murphy in LITTLE BLACK BOOK, that her innocent good boy boyfriend had a secret life, a whole cell phone filled with other women's numbers? <
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>Well, she did in an earlier avatar of the script. Then LITTLE BLACK BOOK came out and the producers realized they would have to change everything, so forget about the portable phone subplot. <
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>Then they must have thought that Nellie McKay was going to be the next big thing, not realizing that everyone, even Nellie McKay's mom and dad, eventually has a saturation point beyond which they beg, "Please, not another Nellie McKay song on the soundtrack!" <
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>The creepy dead ghost father from SIX FEET UNDER plays Jennifer Aniston's father in this one. Originally, the script had the Aniston character confronting her mother, but Aniston has real life mother problems, so they had the mother die fourteen years before the story begins, a giant hole in the movie that all the Steel Magnolia shenanigans of Shirley MacLaine and Kathy Bates don't begin to fill.

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Resuscitating a Classic Movie with a Lacking, Lethargic Sequel Three Decades Later
There are moments in this inconsequential 2005 comedy when I can see a bright future for Jennifer Aniston's light comedic talents, even though this movie does not stretch her much beyond her likeably insecure "Friends" persona. She plays Sarah Huttinger, a likeably insecure New York Times obituary writer going home to Pasadena to attend her younger sister Annie's wedding. Sarah is picture-pretty, 33 and engaged to a nice, unflappable guy named Jeff who accompanies her. At the same time, she's unhappy about her career and wondering why she always feels out-of-sorts with her well-to-do family. A ray of light comes from her only kindred spirit in the family, her feisty, tart-tongued grandmother Katherine, who tells Sarah about her late mother's pre-wedding tryst in Mexico that gives rise to questions about Sarah's paternity. <
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>All the domestic shenanigans that ensue would probably be enough to fill this comedy's blessedly brief 96-minute running time, but screenwriter Ted Griffin hangs it all on the idea that Sarah's family may have been the inspiration for the Robinsons in Charles Webb's 1963 novel, "The Graduate", which of course, is the basis of Mike Nichols' classic 1967 movie. The tie-in must have sounded like a creative idea on paper, but something happened on the way to the screen that has taken most of the comic invention out of it. In fact, there is a pervasive lethargy throughout this movie, and director Rob Reiner is unable to overcome it because Sarah's dilemma of choosing between adventure and predictability never feels that emotionally resonant. The dialogue never feels sharp, perceptive or funny enough to pull off the inevitable comparisons with the earlier film. Moreover, the story is set rather arbitrarily in 1997 to make the timelines make sense with the stars' ages. <
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>Beyond Aniston, a strong cast has been set adrift. Playing Katherine like an even more embittered variation on Aurora Greenway, Shirley MacLaine crackles with aplomb as the possible inspiration for Mrs. Robinson, even when her lines are not as snappy as she thinks they are. As the aging but still magnetic Benjamin Braddock doppelganger, a high-tech mogul named Beau Burroughs, an overly sedate Kevin Costner barely registers in a smallish role. When he does, there is an insinuating, almost creepy quality in the way Beau's relationship with Sarah evolves. Until the end, Mark Ruffalo has little to do as Jeff but wait patiently for Sarah to resolve her personal dilemma. Richard Jenkins and Mena Suvari have even less time to make an impression in the underwritten roles of Sarah's passive father and bubbly sister, respectively. The 2006 DVD provides the original theatrical trailer (which gives away most of the plot) as its sole extra.

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Kept my interest and kept me laughing! Can't beat Jennifer Aniston & this all-star cast!
The ever-lovable and lovely Jennifer Aniston is great in this romantic comedy. She plays the part of Sarah Huffinger, an aspiring journalist who isn't sure what she wants from life. She's engaged to a nice young man, but her plans go awry when she goes back home for her sister's wedding. She meets a billionaire, played by Kevin Costner, who sets her life in an uproar when he reveals secrets about her family that confuse her even more. Will these secrets interfere in her upcoming plans to marry her young man? Will Sarah finally understand what really happened to her mother? Where does her grandmother fit into the scenario? And what does a popular book written by her mother's college friend have to do with Sarah's decisions? <
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>A pro at scene-stealing, Shirley MacLaine plays the part of Sarah's feisty grandmother to perfection. With such an all-star cast, directed by Rob Reiner, this movie is sure to be very popular. It has all the right ingredients: romance, comedy, and plenty of drama.