There's an old Saturday Night Live sketch from the 70s when Buck Henry used to hang around the studio a lot where he's pitching a sequel to The Graduate. They milked it for laughs almost thirty years ago because then, Henry and co. knew such an idea was dreadful. Unfortunately, Hollywood has never heard an idea so awful that it had to say no (Kazaam, anyone?), and thus, we have this movie.
Rumor Has It purports to tell the true story of the Robinson family from The Graduate, telling us up front that the book was based on a real life event, and that all of Pasadena always wanted to know who it really was about. We fast forward thirty years (from the movie) to 1997, where obit writer Sarah (Jennifer Aniston) begins to suspect that the family in question might be hers. Joining her for this ride into nostalgia is Beau Burroughs (Kevin Costner), allegedly the 'Dustin Hoffman' character, and Aunt Mitzi (Shirley MacLaine), supposedly 'Mrs. Robinson.' One of my cardinal rules about cinema is that you never invoke a better movie during your own, because the audience will invariably begin to make comparisons, and unless you're really good, your film will come up short. Well, Rumor Has It isn't very good; it's more very confused. When Sarah starts getting interested in Beau, we have the unlikely scenario of a third generation of a woman in the same family shtupping the same guy, and frankly well, the whole damn thing plays like some adolescent Graduate fanfic, where a girl who was young at the time of the movie finally gets to consummate her schoolgirl crush on Dustin Hoffman. Sure, there's some pablum thrown in about relationships, and the typical Hollywood happy ending (come on, it's a Rob Reiner film, you know how it will end anyway), but most of the film just comes off as a) weird and b) obsessed, like any fanfic, with its source material, in this case, again, The Graduate.
Costner actually does a decent job here in a thoroughly thankless role, having to play the older, grayer version of a beloved cinematic character (he gets one great line, "I dropped out of college, but I don't think The Drop Out would have been as good a title."). Costner displays enough charm that you can believe a woman looking like Jennifer Aniston could fall for him, and he does the best one can with, as I said, a thankless role. Shirley MacLaine is extremely funny as the acerbic old aunt who's still mad at him three decades later, and whenever she's around, the movie gets a lot more fun. But a lot of the weight of this mess rests on Aniston's shoulders, and while I find her to be a good actress, she can't salvage this mess. It doesn't help that she's playing a minor variation of her usual 'confused woman who just can't quite get her life sorted out' an extended riff on Rachel Green, really which is a shame, because when she deviates from formula she's usually pretty good. Here she's more impressive as set dressing than as an actor, and for someone with her chops (The Good Girl, Bruce Almighty, etc.), that's a shame.
Obviously you can give this one a pass, unless you just really love one of the leads (and I like Costner about as much as anyone anymore, seeing how all of Hollywood pretty much reviles him for no good reason). Rumor Has It is just a big old mess, and you have to be very forgiving or as enraptured by The Graduate as the filmmakers were to really enjoy it.
Rumor Has It purports to tell the true story of the Robinson family from The Graduate, telling us up front that the book was based on a real life event, and that all of Pasadena always wanted to know who it really was about. We fast forward thirty years (from the movie) to 1997, where obit writer Sarah (Jennifer Aniston) begins to suspect that the family in question might be hers. Joining her for this ride into nostalgia is Beau Burroughs (Kevin Costner), allegedly the 'Dustin Hoffman' character, and Aunt Mitzi (Shirley MacLaine), supposedly 'Mrs. Robinson.' One of my cardinal rules about cinema is that you never invoke a better movie during your own, because the audience will invariably begin to make comparisons, and unless you're really good, your film will come up short. Well, Rumor Has It isn't very good; it's more very confused. When Sarah starts getting interested in Beau, we have the unlikely scenario of a third generation of a woman in the same family shtupping the same guy, and frankly well, the whole damn thing plays like some adolescent Graduate fanfic, where a girl who was young at the time of the movie finally gets to consummate her schoolgirl crush on Dustin Hoffman. Sure, there's some pablum thrown in about relationships, and the typical Hollywood happy ending (come on, it's a Rob Reiner film, you know how it will end anyway), but most of the film just comes off as a) weird and b) obsessed, like any fanfic, with its source material, in this case, again, The Graduate.
Costner actually does a decent job here in a thoroughly thankless role, having to play the older, grayer version of a beloved cinematic character (he gets one great line, "I dropped out of college, but I don't think The Drop Out would have been as good a title."). Costner displays enough charm that you can believe a woman looking like Jennifer Aniston could fall for him, and he does the best one can with, as I said, a thankless role. Shirley MacLaine is extremely funny as the acerbic old aunt who's still mad at him three decades later, and whenever she's around, the movie gets a lot more fun. But a lot of the weight of this mess rests on Aniston's shoulders, and while I find her to be a good actress, she can't salvage this mess. It doesn't help that she's playing a minor variation of her usual 'confused woman who just can't quite get her life sorted out' an extended riff on Rachel Green, really which is a shame, because when she deviates from formula she's usually pretty good. Here she's more impressive as set dressing than as an actor, and for someone with her chops (The Good Girl, Bruce Almighty, etc.), that's a shame.
Obviously you can give this one a pass, unless you just really love one of the leads (and I like Costner about as much as anyone anymore, seeing how all of Hollywood pretty much reviles him for no good reason). Rumor Has It is just a big old mess, and you have to be very forgiving or as enraptured by The Graduate as the filmmakers were to really enjoy it.