America's Sweethearts

A miasma of vanity envelops America’s Sweethearts where wit ought to reign. It clings, this stink of smug preening. And it depresses: Why can’t some of the most celebrated and highest paid movie stars in the world, two of the industry’s sharpest comic writers, and a studio chief who left his aerie at Walt Disney in a blaze of publicity to start his own freewheeling shop smell the difference between parody and posturing?

That this condition exists in direct proportion to a comedy’s budget and star power shouldn’t, I suppose, be surprising. The kind of rough mocking that works in the rickety guest-host skits on ”SNL” can look like big-talent slumming in an obviously expensive Hollywood movie about making a Hollywood movie. But that’s still no excuse for the bitterness and crudity in ”America’s Sweethearts” — a noxious combination that erodes the 1930s and ’40s screwball-comedy armature on which this mirthless movie is based.

The bones, at least, are sturdy. Catherine Zeta-Jones and John Cusack play the title couple, Gwen Harrison and Eddie Thomas, longtime on-screen partners whose well-hyped offscreen marriage enhances their bankability. Unfortunately, Gwen’s dalliance with a Spanish matinee idol (Hank Azaria, lisping con mucho Antonio Banderas) has busted up the union. Worse, the split has hurt the duo’s box office appeal. No wonder studio chief Dave Kingman (Stanley Tucci) desperately prays that the new Harrison-Thomas picture will be a hit.

Praying, meanwhile, is about all the guy can do, since temperamental director Hal Weidmann (Christopher Walken) won’t let anyone see the finished print until the press junket. (Junkets, followers of the recent fake-critic scandal know, are events during which friendly journalists are given free travel, accommodation, and the opportunity to interview the stars, presumably in exchange for favorable coverage.) Will Weidmann even show up with his cans of film? To distract the braying mob, veteran press agent Lee Phillips (Billy Crystal) concocts a diversion: He’ll dangle the possibility that the couple are reconciling, camouflaging the absence of ”product” in a jumble of PR stunts.

To do that, Lee enlists the help of Gwen’s assistant, Kiki — who also happens to be Gwen’s subjugated sister. And Kiki just happens to be played by Julia Roberts.

And therein lies the theoretical charm of ”America’s Sweethearts” — tangled in a web of fact-like fiction. It’s passingly amusing that Zeta-Jones plays even more of a diva than the real actress’ own PR machine suggests she is. It’s moderately charming that Roberts — America’s real favorite girlfriend, according to her own PR machine — once again contrasts her persona with that of another pretty woman as she did in ”My Best Friend’s Wedding,” graciously (and cagily) playing the less glamorous of the two female leads. It’s dumb coincidence that Roberts’ own freshly broken romance with fellow actor Benjamin Bratt reverberates off screen, as does the Sony studio’s fresh embarrassment involving fabricated quotes from a fictional movie critic. And it’s of no interest at all that this time Roberts steps into padding and prosthetic makeup for her art, temporarily adding 60 pounds for flashbacks to earlier days as her famous sister’s drudge. (It must be said, and said again with each pretty, slender actress who selflessly plays pretend-fat: The added weight isn’t shocking or even unattractive; it’s the assumption of inevitable frumpiness and sexual starvation that’s ugly.)

Something weird and awful happens as these imitations and echoes of behind-the-scenes showbiz life pile up, something deadening in this flop-joke script written by Crystal and the usually tip-top ”Larry Sanders Show” talent Peter Tolan, and directed with no sense of rhythm and a whole lot of indulgence by Joe Roth. The stupidities of junket journalists and the grandiosity of movie people, as presented by Crystal, Tolan, and Roth, metastasize from laughable to mockable. And the satire isn’t nearly as sharp as its participants assume it to be, not even with Walken momentarily contributing a thrilling bit of tap dancing, with Alan Arkin as an oogly-googly guru, or with Seth Green stealing every scene as a weenie-ish flack-in-training. (SAG help him, Larry King makes his umpteenth cameo appearance as the Krusty the Clown of CNN.)

No, the miserableness of junketeers was done with more compassion and insight in ”Notting Hill” (where Roberts plays the diva she ought to be and is funnier, too). The horribleness of press agents was laid bare with less ass-covering in ”Sweet Smell of Success.” The absurdity of the whole damn beguiling, excessive business was taken care of not all that long ago, for that matter, in ”The Player.” ”The whole world is judging me!” the self-absorbed Gwen whines to her sister at one point. As if the whole world cared. But, see, ”America’s Sweethearts” believes, somewhere, that the whole world does care, and despises us for it — no matter how the PR machine spins it.