Plot: What’s it about?
Page (Jennifer Love Hewitt) and Max (Sigourney Weaver) are a mother/daughter team. Teams play to win, yes? Well, Page is in the midst of leaving her mother when the good ‘ol IRS steps in and demands years worth of back taxes from the family. So it looks like Page and Max aren’t going away from each other just yet. Who are Page and Max, anyway? Aside from being very good-looking (we’ll get into that later), they are con artists. Are they good at it? Evidently not that good, but in some cases they’re just good enough. Their scheme is simple, Max seduces a wealthy man and eventually gets him to marry her and under the guise of her having too much to drink, she frees herself from performing any, uh, “marital duties” on the wedding night. She wakes up hung over and then it’s Page’s turn to shine as she manages to get caught messing around with the newly wed husband. Sounds pretty simple, right? Well, this has managed to work a few times, but what does the mother/daughter duo get out of it all? Money. After finding her new husband with a woman (her daughter), a quick out of court settlement is all it takes to satisfy these greedy women.
With a bit of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels mixed in with The Sting, Heartbreakers focuses on the mother-daughter combo just enough to be clever and witty. Of course, there wouldn’t be a movie if this plan was executed so well that there was never a hitch. Would there? Heck no. Ray Liotta’s character of Vinny Staggliono is the most recent victim of the scheme, but he’s as fooled as the next guy (and there’s plenty of next guy’s) when he learns the awful truth as to what’s really going on. You see, Vinny follows the gals to Florida, but not because of revenge, but because he wants to consummate his wedding night vows! How’s that for comedy? The casting of Gene Hackman as a constantly coughing, about ready to croak cigarette tycoon William B. Tensy and computer nerd (Jason Lee).
Heartbreakers is one of those movie you either love or you hate (or you love to hate it). The casting, I though, was superb. The director, David Mirkin is a long time favorite of mine from his work on “The Simpson’s” and you don’t get references like those if you don’t know how to make people laugh. Sure, it’s a plot that has been done time and time again, but most movies these days are just copies of copies anyway, so why not have a little fun with it. You can tell the cast had a good time with the shoot here (as evidenced by the 11 minute featurette, “Laffs and Gaffes”) so you’re bound to get caught up in the fun too. That, or you’ll turn it off and and make the movie a coaster. Either way, you’ll like what you see here. And let me touch on another note as well. Maybe it’s just me, but Sigourney Weaver seems to be getting better and better looking as she ages. In films like Alien and Ghostbusters, she was pretty, but she has this quality now that makes me want to see her in every role she’s in (especially if she keeps following suit and appears in skimpy lingere and cleavage-exposing outfits–“Galaxy Quest”). Ok, enough of that. If it’s a funny movie you’re after, this may be it. If not, the disc features enough extras that will entertain you for a few hours.
Video: How does it look?
Heartbreakers disappoints heavily here. For a movie at least ten years old, I might expect a transfer of this quality, but it’s a brand new movie and new to DVD. The most glaring thing that annoyed me was the over saturation of colors, particularly when it came to the flesh tones. Everyone looked orange and that’s not good. While the print is relatively free of any artifacts, scratches or blemishes and edge enhancement is minimal, I still couldn’t keep my mind off the fact that maybe my TV’s settings had been damaged or reset. They were fine. I don’t know if they didn’t spend enough time with the transfer or they just tried to cram too much information on the disc and the picture suffered as a result, but the lowdown is that it looks average at the very best. You’ve been warned.
Audio: How does it sound?
While most comedies aren’t that strong on sound, Heartbreakers does fare a bit better in it’s audio department than it’s video. Presented in a Dolby Digital 5.1 mix, the surrounds are used a few times, but effectively. The dialogue is clean and clear and I think it’s safe to say that most of the action takes place within the three front channels. Yes, this is short, but I don’t know what else to say. When it comes to sound, Heartbreakers gets the job done. That’s it.
Supplements: What are the extras?
MGM has offered us yet another Special Edition, funny how they tend to do that with most every “hit” they have these days, and it’s loaded with some extra material. There are two commentaries, the first with the director David Mirkin and the second with stars (starlets) Jennifer Love Hewitt and Sigourney Weaver. The first commentary is rather informative, I found, but with one person talking it tends to get a bit dry and boring. As is the case with this commentary. I found Hewitt’s and Weaver’s commentary far more entertaining mainly because I was picturing them both naked. Only kidding. Two people makes the track run a bit more smoothly, but as actresses they aren’t finely tuned to the technical aspects of a production like the director and/or producer would be. Still, if you have a choice, listen to this one. There are two original documentaries (which I would classify as featurettes, but went ahead and labeled them as documentaries above) entitled “The Making of Heartbreakers” and “Laffs and Gaffes”. The first is your traditional “making of” featurette. It has interviews with the cast and crew, tells how excited Actor A is to work with Director A and how Director A is to work with Actor B and so on. Not the most original, but it’s nice to have on the disc. Laffs and Gaffes is a bit more interesting in the sense that it shows all of the outtakes and funny things that happened during the filming. Beware…way too many jokes about the statue!!! Next up are some deleted scenes, 22 in all and the feature clocks in around 23 minutes…you do the math. I won’t go over every one in detail, but let’s just say that the movie is just over two hours long (long for a comedy) and these have every right to be labeled “deleted”. A trailer is the only other feature of mention here. While Heartbreakers may or may not be your cup of tea, it’s got it’s share of supplements and sounds good; too bad it can’t look a bit better.
