VIDEOS

By Cole Smithey

"Heartbreakers"
3 stars

If it's a robust comedy, full of audacious sight gags and surprises, that you long for then look no further. Director David Mirkin ("Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion") aces this inspired farce-parody about a mother(Sigourney Weaver) and daughter (Jennifer Love Hewitt) con team who get in over their heads when love interrupts their 'marry-and-divorce-for-payoff' schemes.
There isn't an ounce of fat or and inch of slack in this zizzy script, and even brief performances by Saturday Night Live alumni Nora Dunn and Kevin Nealon register bubbling hysteria. Gene Hackman plays a bumblingclown as William B. Tensy, a disgusting chain-smoking billionaire. He's the most putrid corporate Republican running dog to ever cough up a tobacco-encrusted lung as a rube for Weaver's hilarious incarnation of Ulga Yevanova, a Russian woman-in-waiting.

"One Night At McCool's"
1 star

Michael Douglas' production company Furthur Films trots out debut director Harald Zwart with a preditable dark comedy centered around three men's recollections of disasterous events caused by their meeting the same woman at a bar called 'McCool's.'

Liv Tyler plays Jewel, a materialist sex bunny with a penchant for theft and manipulating men. If it weren't for the film's canny casting choices of Matt Dillon, Paul Reiser, and John Godman, the movie's already lacking entertainment value would be less than zero.
There's just enough senseless death, lacking morals, and bad hair-dos to condemn this movie as a Tarrantino knock-off too many.