Roads to Riches

Maybe they should have used the alternate title, "Rat in the Can," instead of "Strange Hearts." Of course, if you go looking for "Strange hearts" on cable, you will have better luck trying "Roads to Riches."

But, "Rat in the Can" is a good title to describe just how far Jack Waters (Robert Forster) has fallen in his luck. It's his million-dollar idea, and it's a winner if he can manage to go through with it. Forster (Jackie Brown) plays a lovable loser, who just can't get his act together. It is going to cost him the love of his life, Moira (Rose McGowan, who plays what I consider her best role to date as a stripper.) Smooth talking Texan Henry (Kip Pardue - Remember the Titans) is working his charm to drag her back home to keep her barefoot and pregnant.

"Friends" fans will find this slow, but it is a good romantic indie film.

Breathtakingly ridiculous dialog, wholly unlikely plot features, and characters who seem crafted specifically to mock any attempt to take them seriously didn't stop this amazing mess from being made (of what, though? One imagines there had to be some promising kernel that ended up flowering into this egregious waste of time.) and never cleaned up. Hence, it's clear that *anything* can find the financing to see celluloid (or HD), although the process by which this one got finished would have to be more interesting than the film itself. It's entirely possible that the film's off-kilter pacing and made-for-70s-TV sensibilities could eventually land it a cult gig, but of course there's always a lot of competition for those; perhaps a film-school tale-of-caution will be this three-titled train-wreck's legacy.

I loved this film. Rose M is all grown up and Forester couldn't be better. It moved me. i loved this movie. The fragile balance in life between what we mean and what we say are well explored. The consequnce of inaction is heartbreaking and can hurt us more than the things we do say. Well done.

I loved this film...I felt sorry about the rat in the can but still I loved it hehe. Rose McGowan's all grown up since Jawbreaker, which was so awful. This movie proves that even she can be emmotional, away from "Charmed" which she totally blowed. GREAT job to all the cast, exellent done guys!!

The biggest star in this vehicle was Harry Hamlin, playing a character named Dan Smith, so that shows you how important that role was.

Robert Forster, looking like a poor man's Alec Baldwin, plays Jack Waters, a middle-aged man who is a contestant on the live (on the air) game show "Road to Riches". He thinks he's going to win $50,000. He doesn't. He's so enraged he begins cursing and has to be physically restrained and led from the set. Strangely enough, despite this fact, and the fact he later destroys property--as well as making threats--he is never barred from the studio. That is just one example of the lack of believability in this film.

The next character to enter the non-plot of this storyline is young Henry Fields played by Kip Pardue. Henry, new in town, is the poster child for naive yokel.

Henry & Jack fall into conversation outside the studio and hook up.

Jack takes Henry to a strip joint, where Henry sees Moira Kennedy(our third character--played by Rose McGowan), on stage, performing what is supposed to be an erotic, exotic Asian dance. What actually happened is, the girl came out and did a little wriggling and weaving that lasted maybe five minutes and was nothing exceptional.

Moira is a friend of Jack's, so she's conveniently handy from then on.

Nothing of much interest happens throughout the rest of the film. There's some kind of offer made by Dan Smith to Jack to screw over Henry for an undisclosed amount of money. Why Dan would make this offer was never clear.

Eventually we have both men up for grabs by the unexceptional Moira. There's balding Jack, a loser old enough to be her grandfather, and Henry, another loser, dumber than dirt. Gosh! Golly! Gee-willikers Folks!--which one will she chose!? I know I didn't care.

1 star