Rumor Has it... (2005)

I didn't come here to tell you I can't live without you.
I can live without you.
I just don't want to.

This is the way people talk in Hollywood schmalzville.

I saw this film on the shelf and thought, 'How intriguing, a follow up to The Graduate. Hey it says "Two Thumbs Up" and I like Jennifer Aniston--her punch at McDonaldization in Office Space, the rip on rich White Westsiders in Friends with Money, the surprising darkness of The Break-up even Along Came Polly made me laugh.'

Yeah I like Jennifer Aniston.

But as the opening credits rolled and I saw 'Directed by Rob Reiner' the stink of formulaic triteness shook me like the Aniston character is shaken by air turbulence in her plane seat. A flighty woman who must be reassured by her sweetly funny fiancé--this is going to be a bumpy ride.

Soon we find the tedious but good-hearted widower/father, the free-spirited alcoholic grandmother (you're Mrs Robinson arent you!!??) and of course the wealthy playboy who flies his own private jet.

Echoes of Robert Stack seducing Lauren Bacall in Written on the Wind, but Reiner is no Douglas Sirk, who infused his characters with biblical neuroses, American puritanical rage and the irreparable cruelty of domesticity. Yes, the confession of Dorothy Malone allows a concluding matrimonial reconciliation but not before blood has been shed--and isn't Bacall in the end a substitute for Stack, Rock Hudson's true desire revealed by his utter erotic disengagement from Malone, who he regards too much "like a sister."

But Reinerworld knows its target market, and sexual dysfunction just doesn't sell.