Heartbreakers

HEARTBREAKERS

Rating: B

Let's see: Running time is about 123 minutes... 60 seconds in a minute... 24 frames per second... okay, that makes for about 177,000 individual frames of film (give or take). Or, in other words, about 177,000 shots of Jennifer Love Hewitt's cleavage. There are more gratuitous breast shots in here than in Erin Brockovich, if you can believe that. Start inscribing Jennifer's name on an Oscar statuette right now.

Where was I? Oh yeah. Sigourney Weaver and Hewitt play a mother and daughter con team who specialize in marrying wealthy men, setting them up to get caught in an adulterous interlude, then taking them to the cleaners in the subsequent divorce. Ray Liota and Gene Hackman are two of their unfortunate marks. Along the way, Hewitt starts a scam on her own (sort of a side project to keep busy when things are slow at work) when she meets bar owner Jason Lee and hears he's secretly worth millions. Think she'll fall in love with him for real? Think she'll then break up with him "for his own good"? Think a happy reunion for the star-crossed couple is in the cards? I swear, every romantic comedy ever written has the exact same frigging plot. I think I'll polish off a romantic comedy script right after I'm done here.

Fortunately, this film is saved because many of the jokes along the way are pretty funny. Some scenes between Weaver and Hackman go absolutely nowhere, and a subplot involving Nora Dunn as Hackman's bizarre maid misses the funny bone by the proverbial country mile. But there are enough good scenes in the mix to smooth out the rough spots. Even Ray Liota, who I have difficulty looking at after Hannibal without feeling sick to my stomach, displays some comic flair in his scenes later in the movie. And of course, any time your attention might start to wander, in bounces Hewitt in her next skimpy outfit. It's a wonder the poor girl didn't die of exposure before filming was completed.