Isn't She Great

Great oneliners by Paul Rudnick and a great turn by Stockard Channing and the always funny and fantastic Bette make this an enjoyable movie. But it doesn't really hold up to much scrutiny. And when is Hollywood going to stop using talented, classically trained Hispanic actresses to play over the top, stereotyped cleaning women?

In my opinion, this movie was just "ok". There was something about the acting that just wasn't right. I can't put my finger on it. Perhaps it was the roles that Midler and Lane played. They seemed very superficial. I wasn't convinced that they were the characters. I did like the actor from "Frasier". Although it was not a total "bomb", I would not watch this movie again.

A good way to gauge the end results of this film disaster would be to temporarily resurrect the personage of Jacqueline Susann to get her reaction. I think she would have laughed it off the screen, but not amused laughter: aching, bitter, cynical laughter. I don't see it as a camp film ("Valley of the Dolls" was a camp film); this is a pure, unadulterated error in judgment by many talented people with honorable intentions. The picture looks good and has the nice addition of Burt Bacharach's music score (with the occasional Dionne Warwick vocal--natch), but it is unbearably miscast. When was the last time you can remember Bette Midler failing to ignite on screen (her TV sitcom not accepted)? Bette strains for a low-key effect in the serious moments, but it's just not in her to be pensive; her raucous scenes also derail, and this is due in part to poor direction, poor editing choices, and also poor judgment from Midler, who lets herself be seen on-camera struggling (a struggling comedienne is about as funny as a drowning one--here she does both). A sequence in the film that has hubby-to-be Irving Mansfield following Jackie into a NYC lake is both outrageous and deadening. The factually-incorrect script aside, "Isn't She Great" (no question mark?) is quite simply a beleaguered movie: vapid, colorless, unfocused, and out-of-touch. Susann might've asked what her 'cut' was and then forgot the entire thing. *1/2 from ****

People have complained about how bad this is. They are right. People have noted how much they enjoyed it. They are right, too. Remember how bad the book and the movie 'Valley of the Dolls' were? Well, here ya go-- It's all in the same vein. They are obviously being over the top, campy, kitschy... If you are looking for Scorcese, this ain't it. But cheesy fun this IS! Unfortunately, because they felt they HAD to make it campy, the 'dramedy' doesn't work. So it goes between melodramatic and wiseacre, with neither hitting the mark. I have to say I enjoyed the movie the same way I would enjoy 'Mommie Dearest' or 'Showgirls'. Just mindless, guilty time-wasting. I'm also a sucker for period pieces when they get it right. The clothing, the celebrities, the zeitgeist of the time are pretty good. I'll take Bette Midler chewing the scenery in this over her deplorable 'Beaches' character any day!

ISN'T SHE GREAT (2000) ** Bette Midler, Nathan Lane, Stockard Channing, David Hyde Pierce, John Cleese, Amanda Peet. Before there was Jackie Collins and Amazon.com there was Jacqueline Susann. That is prior to the subgenre of 'trashy romance' novels found in your neighborhood pharmacy and the glut that is now the conglomerate superbookstore –i.e. marketing and focus groups for the masses! – there was Jacqueline Susann, whose bawdy, vulgar and tasteless novels were ultimately candy for the average American reader who gobbled her tomes faster than she could churn them out. In Andrew Bergman's look at the queen of the acquired taste, who else could portray a larger than life figurehead than the estimable Divine Miss M herself, Bette Midler.

Midler gives it her all with her trademark ball-breaking brio as the celebrity craven author whose indefatigable image fashioning was only matched by par by her long-suffering but ever devoted husband and business partner Irving Mansfield (touché Lane, making their onscreen presence a once in a lifetime pairing to appreciative audiences), who used all his show biz savvy – no matter how gauche or seemingly stooping manners of barnstorming the country to every podunk backwater stationery store or spreading the word to a busload of school children – to make Susann a giantess among the mortals in the writing field.

Based on a reminiscence by New Yorker's Michael Korda, the fact that the real Susann was no sweetheart and a real tough cookie with a few sad hurdles – her ongoing bout with cancer and the institutionalization of her only child who suffered from autism – are casually sugar-coated by Bergman (whose impeccable credits include a plethora of the comic pantheon including 'The In-Laws', 'The Freshman' and 'Blazing Saddles') and the sharply sticky screenplay by scathing scribe Paul Rudnick ('In & Out') wisely overlook her obvious flaws and instead center on the unlikely union of two borderline caricatures of the entertainment field, and their questionable romance. But Midler and Lane surpass the film's shortcomings with their theatrical overplaying, which is arguably suitable, as well as the always welcome Channing, one of our most underrated comic actresses, whose succor in her line readings are a stitch (when Susann belabors she doesn't know how to write a book, Channing says with aplomb, 'Talent isn't everything.'); she's like the salt in a margarita.

Also lending able support is Hyde Pierce in another variation of his tv persona from 'Frasier' as Susann's stuffed shirt editor and Cleese as the Nehru jacketed publisher, both in their element here.

The one thing that seems to be missing is it seems outdated and quite a lot to compress in a film that has the dubious distinction of telling the story of a woman who wasn't very nice nor well respected, but then again that hasn't been the case of celebrity history in this country, so I'm not even going to argue that!