Posted: 12/29/2005

Rumor Has It

(2005)

by Hank Yuloff

As I was sitting in the theater for 96 minutes watching Jennifer Aniston light up the screen just one thought ran through my head: How the HELL did Pitt give up on being with this chick for that freaky freak with the hot lips?

Oh, yea, I did watch the movie, and it has a great premise. Rumor Has It is about the family that was the basis for the book and subsequent movie, The Graduate. Aniston is Sarah Huttinger, the daughter /grand daughter of the two women who are apparently the answer to the longest running story on the Pasadena coconut telegraph: Who were the mother/daughter pair who slept with Benjamin Braddock?

It is now 30 years later and on the eve of Sarah’s younger (Mena Suvari) sister’s wedding, Sarah’s boyfriend Jeff Daley (Mark Ruffalo from Collateral, Just Like Heaven) does the math and figures out that Sarah’s mother and father either got pregnant on their wedding night or it had to be very close to that date. When Sarah does a bit of digging, she finds out that Katharine Ross, uh, her mother, ran off with Beau Burroughs (Kevin Costner) the week before the wedding so she might be the daughter of the man who slept with her mother and grand mother. Sarah’s mother (the Katharine Ross character) has long since passed away, leaving Shirley McClaine all alone to keep the secret that she was Anne Bancroft, uh, Mrs. Robinson.

Is it possible that Costner is Aniston’s real father and that is why she has always felt like she was not a real part of the family? Or is she just different from all of them and still related? Such is the angst that takes us the rest of the way home. That angst is increased when Aniston sleeps with Beau Burroughs - and figures out she may have (yucky!!!) just slept with her father.

Don’t go into this film with too high an expectation and you will come out with a smile on your face. It is a Rob Reiner directed film, but does not have the spark of The American President, When Harry Met Sally, or A Few Good Men. In other words, it is a nice date film, but not great theater and gives you nothing to ponder afterwards.

The acting is all top grade. When McClaine, Costner and Aniston are on screen at the same time, there is a lot of acting prowe$$ but this will never be proclaimed as any of their best work. Same can be said for the second tier of actors, Ruffalo, Richard Jenkins (playing Earl Huttinger here and the dad in Six Feet Under), and Suvari (American Pie, American Beauty). All did a great job but this is not one of those Oscar sleepers. The best line in the movie: Pasadena is what happens when you give lots of people all the money they could want and leave them alone for 100 years.

Rent it or better yet, wait for it to come on the USA Network. Like How To Lose a Guy in 10 Days, it will have the kind of run that puts in on most every weekend.

Hank Yuloff is our senior writer in Los Angeles when he isn’t stalking Jennifer through her hedges.

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