THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 6, 1995 TAG: 9508080425
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Movie review
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, MOVIE CRITIC
LENGTH: Medium: 77 lines
THE SOUTHERN setting of ``Something To Talk About'' is interesting and so is the premise - a wife is chastised for making a fuss when her husband is caught philandering.
But it comes to nothing in a movie that can't decide what it wants to be. Advertised as a ``romantic comedy,'' it is more steeped in trauma and shrill hysteria than in either romance or comedy.
Julia Roberts, trying to hold on to her crown as top female star, is teary-eyed and vulnerable as Grace, the frigid wife who has no idea that her marriage has become boring. When she catches hubby Eddie (Dennis Quaid) sparkin' with a flashy blonde, she makes so much shrill and overwrought trouble that she may set feminism back decades.
Rather than confronting him in private, she exposes him at a local restaurant - dressed in her nightgown.
The script is by Callie Khouri, who also wrote ``Thelma and Louise,'' which should give you an idea of the intended message - men are rats and women are long-suffering. The treatment backfires when the woman is this off-center. She should have aimed for something like ``The War of the Roses,'' a fine film. Instead, Khouri tries to turn this into a traditional commercial comedy. It's difficult to have it both ways.
Quaid plays his character as a cad but comes across as more likable, surely, than he was meant to be.
Robert Duvall plays Wyly King, the strong father who is used to having his way. He is perhaps the most believable character. Wyly feels that his daughter is embarrassing everyone by making a fuss. He figures that Eddie, the husband who was nicknamed Hound Dog in college, is only being natural by fooling around a bit.
His wife is played by the always-professional Gena Rowlands.
The best lines, and the showiest part, goes to Kyra Sedgwick as the rebellious younger sister. She has zingers and a kick that could have saved the movie, if she had been given more screen time.
Swedish director Lasse Halstrom scored well with character-driven films like ``My Life as a Dog'' and the superb ``What's Eating Gilbert Grape,'' but he has no idea what to do with a comedy this broad. Clearly, he doesn't want it to be broad comedy but he also doesn't want it to be a drama.
All is lost in the last half when it shifts from the Julia-Dennis plot altogether to drag in a riding competition in which the family's youngest member, played with great naturalness by delightful discovery Haley Aull, has to ride against the odds. There is no suspense about the competition because nothing is at stake. Meanwhile, the film's real center, Julia and Dennis, is left somewhere off camera.
``Something To Talk About'' was originally called ``Grace Under Pressure,'' a better title and one that suggests that once this was a drama. As it is, it's all over the place, going nowhere. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
WARNER BROTHERS
Julia Roberts' overwrought role as a betrayed wife may set feminism
back decades.
Graphic
MOVIE REVIEW
``Something To Talk About''
Cast: Julia Roberts, Robert Duvall, Gena Rowlands, Kyra Sedgwick,
Dennis Quaid
Director: Lasse Hallstrom
Screenplay: Callie Khouri
Music: Hans Zimmer and Graham Preskett
MPAA rating: R (coarse language, sexual candor)
Mal's rating: Two stars
Locations: Cinemark and Regal Greenbrier 13 in Chesapeake;
Circle 6 and Maingate in Norfolk; Columbus, Kemps River, Lynnhaven
Mall and Surf-n-Sand in Virginia Beach
by CNB