Heartbreakers (2001)

Directed by David Mirkin. Starring Sigourney Weaver, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Ray Liotta, Jason Lee, Gene Hackman, Anne Bancroft, Jeffrey Jones, Julio Oscar Mechoso, Norah Dunn, Sarah Silverman, Zach Galifianakis. [PG-13]

Limp, wheezy con artist comedy goes back and forth on demonstrating either effort without results or laziness without charm, depending on the actor/character. Weaver and Hewitt are featured (unconvincingly) as a mother-daughter hustler team with a basic but clever grift—Weaver seduces and marries some rich dolt, then sends in her nymphet progeny to inspire the guy to stray, and after he’s caught cheating, they make off with a fat settlement. One of their duped dopes (Liotta) catches up with them some time later, out for a little payback; meanwhile, Hewitt tries to prove she’s ready to strike out on her own by enticing a wealthy bar owner (Lee). Periodically humorous—and relatively painless when it isn’t—but not breezy or sophisticated enough to overlook all the logic lapses, and the comic momentum is too strangled to forgive its two-plus-hour runtime. Weaver looks like she’s having fun, but Hewitt can’t do much besides look fetching in tight, skimpy clothes (she generates no chemistry at all with Lee, who barely even seems awake most of the time). Hackman is wasted in a one-note part as a chain-smoking tobacco magnate who coughs more often than he talks. Bancroft’s final onscreen film role; Ricky Jay and Carrie Fisher both make cameos.

46/100