I liked the first twenty or thirty minutes of Heartbreakers, but after that things get pretty silly pretty fast.
I had high hopes for this comedy, starring as it does two great actors, comic or otherwise, in Sigourney Weaver and Gene Hackman, and dealing as it does with the ripe fields of larceny and double dealing. But, alas, "Heartbreakers" breaks our hearts by taking a promising premise and slowly dissolving it into formula clichés. This 2001 release did well at the box office, which is why, I suppose, MGM decided to give it their Special Edition treatment. But, actually, it probably did well only because a lot of people went to see it for its stars and because in a year that has produced so few good comedies it was the only show in town.
Sigourney Weaver and Jennifer Love Hewitt play Max and Page Conners, a mother and daughter con team, a bright idea right there. Their specialty is having the mother marry a series of rich guys and the daughter seducing them, prompting quick divorces and lots of cash settlements. Of course, they´re not above conning restaurants out of meals and distracted men at gas stations out of their credit cards, either. The movie begins with Max getting married to husband number thirteen, a hoodlum chop-shop owner named Dean (Ray Liotta), and Page doing her number on him. In one of the film´s funnier scenes, Page gets her hair caught in Dean´s zipper while Max walks in, prompting an uncontested divorce. But Dean vows he still loves Max and, divorced or not, sets out to find her and woo her again.
Meanwhile, any money Max and Page realize from their latest scam is soon seized by the IRS for back taxes. Anne Bancroft has a nice supporting role as a zealous IRS agent who can´t wait to get her hands on every penny of Max and Page´s money, leaving the ladies penniless. Needing a big, new score, they head for Palm Beach, Florida, to nail the richest guy they can find.
They set their sights on William Tensy (Gene Hackman), a repulsive, multi-billionaire old geezer who owns a tobacco company and is addicted to his own product. Hackman plays the part with the zeal of W.C. Fields, whom he resembles in bulbous red nose. His hacking cough, yellowed, tobocco-stained teeth, and constant mouthfuls of smoke make him one of the confidence team´s more challenging marks. Hackman is, in fact, the best thing in the movie, which is the case with so many of his films. No matter how bad the material, he always seems to rise above it and never turns in a bad performance. It´s unfortunate he hasn´t more to do here.
For that matter, all the leads in this film are good, with Weaver playing a beautiful, seductive, sexy vamp and Hewitt a cute, vivacious, sexy vampiress. Both women use their obvious assets to good advantage. The fourth major lead besides the women and Hackman is Jason Lee as Jack, a beach-bar owner who provides a serious love interest for Hewitt. Jack is the only honest and scrupulous person in the picture, but as a result he comes off as rather plain and drippy. In supporting roles, besides Ms. Bancroft are Nora Dunn as Miss Madress, Tensy´s housekeeper, a part that parodies the sinister Miss Danvers in Hitchcock´s "Rebecca," and Jeffrey Jones as Mr. Appel, a stuffy hotel manager conned into letting the ladies stay at his ritzy establishment gratis.
I liked the first twenty or thirty minutes of "Heartbreakers," but after that things get pretty silly pretty fast. The gags begin to fall flat or at best feel forced. A parrot inhales too much of Tensy´s cigarette smoke and falls over in his cage. People fall down a lot. A dead body is accidentally knocked off a balcony and falls crashing to the pavement. Page´s pursuit of the bar owner, Jack, is farfetched and forgettable. I expected more from a humorous movie con game--more twists, more surprises, more suspense; something more along the lines of "The Sting." But not here. With one exception, which I obviously won´t reveal, everything falls in line with every other routine romantic-comedy you´ve ever seen.
Average user rating (1-5):