America's Sweethearts (12)

Hollywood on Hollywood: is there anything, other than a hit, that the industry loves more? Holding up the mirror has been a source of inspiration to some great directors. Preston Sturges did it soulfully in Sullivan's Travels. Nicholas Ray did it despairingly in In a Lonely Place. Altman did it suavely in The Player. Now, the former studio boss Joe Roth does it softly, softly in America's Sweethearts, his subjects making bland sitting-ducks of themselves: the venality of the studios, the egomania of the talent, the duplicity of the publicity agent, the stupidity of the press. These join to form a conga line of self-mockery, or would do if Billy Crystal and his co-writer Peter Tolan didn't keep on confusing self-mockery with self-regard.

It begins promisingly enough. Eddie Thomas (John Cusack) and Gwen Harrison (Catherine Zeta Jones), having enjoyed hit after hit as Hollywood's hottest couple, are now on the brink of divorce. Their last picture together, priced at $86m, is being held ransom by its madcap genius director (Christopher Walken), who refuses to show the finished product to anyone until the press screening. (A movie that hasn't been audience-approved – we instantly know we're watching a fantasy.) In a flurry of panic, the chief suit at the studio (Stanley Tucci) hires a veteran press agent, Lee Phillips (Billy Crystal), who will cajole the feuding couple into making nice for the media and thus help rescue the movie from disaster.

Crystal's smokescreen is a press junket at an expensive country resort, where his first task is to cool the heated egos of his two stars. Easier said than done when Eddie is still smarting from his wife's rejection, and Gwen is, well, battling with the pressures of just being Gwen: "People have no idea what it's like being me," she whines. The twist is that Gwen's younger sister Kiki is a long-suffering Cinderella who's been quietly carrying a torch for Eddie. The further twist is that she was once a frumpy 16-stoner and now looks more of a movie star than her sister: she's Julia Roberts, in fact. (If you ever wondered how Julia looks in a fat-suit, here's your opportunity). So the fuse is lit, and we sit back and wait for the fireworks.

An hour and a half later, we're still waiting. America's Sweethearts turns out to be one of those films that operates at the lowest possible level of interest without actually plunging you into boredom. The problem is that it lacks either the snap of satire or the giddiness of screwball. Joe Roth, who once made a tight little family comedy called Coupe de Ville, seems to have mislaid those comic chops during his long absence as a production chief. Crystal can write a whip-smart line now and then – Eddie on why he travels alone: "I'm a paranoid schizophrenic – I am my own entourage" – and he understands the way the business works, yet this isn't enough to sustain a movie. The mutual back-scratching of the press junket is accurately caught in the montage of five-minute interviews that stretch over a day, but that's really all it is: accurate. The film is pretending to give us the inside track on an industry that's already been thoroughly investigated. Do we need to be told, for instance, that press agents thrive on gossip and hype, and that they'll scheme and connive to get their movie talked about?

It doesn't work as a romance either, because the emotional logic between the principals is patently false. The idea of Eddie and Gwen being together in the first place feels way off: he's too slouchy and depressive (in the likeable Cusack manner) to be married to anyone, least of all Gwen. Zeta Jones is a good sport about playing the archetypal Hollywood harpie, a screeching sack of insecurity, narcissism and rudeness: sad to say, but she's the only character who seems to have been drawn with any degree of conviction. Julia, America's real sweetheart, does her put-upon sister act with dependable graciousness, though how much more interesting it might have been if she'd played the spoilt bitch-goddess and shown the pretty woman to have fangs.

As for Crystal himself, that he plays this press agent as a genial good-guy rather than as, say, a frazzled control freak underscores the larger problem. He's too eager to be liked, and so is the film. He has his moments. Catching Kiki chowing furiously through an all-you-can-eat breakfast, he looks at her plate and says, "When you get to the Formica, stop". But the film never allows itself to have nasty, gleeful fun at Hollywood's expense the way Steve Martin did in Bowfinger or Martin Short in The Big Picture. Here, Hank Azaria does a mildly amusing turn as a puffball of Spanish machismo who's squiring Gwen about town, and insiders may chuckle at Christopher Walken's screw-loose director, Hal Weidmann – a sly salute to the late Hal Ashby, perhaps? It's not much to take away, but it's something.

Walken can coincidentally be seen this week in his younger days, as Diane Keaton's weirdo brother in Annie Hall. The Seventies were Allen's golden years as a film-maker, and this ranks alongside Manhattan (1979) as one of the funniest romantic comedies ever made. The Academy thought so, too, and in 1977 gave it Best Picture and Best Director, awards which Allen famously declined to collect in person – he was tootling away at his regular Monday-night slot back in Manhattan. Nearly 25 years on, it has a freshness and sophistication that America's Sweethearts can only dream of. A sadness, too, insofar as it is the recollection of a love affair now over, with Allen playing the lugubrious romantic to Keaton's scatty eccentric. Their performances are marvellous, while the script (by Allen and Marshall Brickman) contains lines that are not only brilliant but useful. Has there been a smarter excuse for missing a date ("my raccoon had hepatitis") or better advice to an aspiring student ("don't take any course where they make you read Beowulf")? Truly, a work of genius.