Bette Midler, Nathan Lane, Stockard Channing David
Hyde Pierce, Amanda Peet, and John Cleese
January is generally known as Hollywood's Dumping
Ground, the time of year every studio chooses to jettison their
most odorous stinkbomb films on an unsuspecting post-holiday populace.
Unlike the rest of the year, these are the films they know
aren't very good...economics dictates that they try to make money,
but their faith in their product is never lower than during the
early weeks of winter.
Sometimes the films are bad ideas from concept to release
-- witness this year's biggest January bomb, SUPERNOVA -- but
sometimes the films released in this season are true heartbreakers.
They are films that failed in spite of themselves; the right script,
the right cast, the right elements may all be in place, and yet
it still arrives as an artistic disappointment. Such is the case
of ISN'T SHE GREAT, a colorful biography of the sensationalistic
novelist Jacquelline Susann. Starring the inimitable Bette Midler
as Susann, a top-drawer supporting cast (including Nathan Lane,
Stockard Channing, David Hyde Pierce and John Cleese), a script
by Hollywood's greatest working comedic writer (Paul Rudnick),
and dozens of outlandish costumes, ISN'T SHE GREAT is a
surprisingly flat affair, a sappy low-rent comedy that had all
the makings of a laughing masterpiece.
Susann's life certainly qualifies as worthy subject
matter. Wild and brassy, Susann was a small-time actress until
she met future husband and agent Irving Mansfield (Lane). Encouraging
her to write, Susann created a drug-addled tale of actresses and
stardom, Valley Of The Dolls, which became the best-selling
novel of all time. Throughout her international success, however,
Susann also fought personal demons. Her only son was born with
severe autism, and lived in an institution for his entire life.
Furthermore, she contracted breast cancer, which eventually took
her life after four books and worldwide acclaim. She kept her
disease hidden almost until her untimely death.
Such an inherently dramatic life, combined with Susann's
natural comedic sensibility and her sense of the outrageous, would
seem tailor-made for a cinematic treatment. There may still be
a great Jacquelline Susann film out there, but ISN'T SHE GREAT
isn't it. Rudnick, who was written some of the funniest movies
of the decade (JEFFREY, IN AND OUT, ADDAMS FAMILY VALUES), is
way off his game. The jokes are rarely funny or original, and
often ill-timed. When Jacquelline confesses to her ailment, Rudnick
slips in tasteless one-liners that neither heighten nor lighten
the mood. Rudnick is completely unable to navigate Susann's life
with the dexterity than Susann herself did. Comedy and drama fight
for prominence in Rudnick's script, and a confused and exhausted
audience wait for a payoff that never arrives.
The cast isn't much help, either. Bette Midler has
decided to play Susann as a slightly trashier version of herself;
from schmaltz-laden conversations with God to not-quite-shocking
mentions of sex, her version of the author is at best an untalented
hack. The question "How in the world did she get famous?"
may be one the film intends, but it gives short shrift to any
substantive answers. We don't get any insight into Jacquelline.
She writes about drugs, wild parties and stars, but none are in
evidence throughout the film. She walks into a lake on a date,
supposedly to kill herself, but rethinks it at the possibility
of acting in a commercial. She remains as much a mystery in the
final frames of ISN'T SHE GREAT as she did at the beginning.
Nathan Lane is saddled with the melancholy Mansfield,
a shlub whose love for Susann propelled her to the top. It's as
impossible to buy his starstruck feelings for Susann as it is
to believe the simplistic version of this character. Lane simply
has nothing to play with; the thinly drawn character has all the
resonance of cardboard. Likewise, a bitchily testy actress, Florence
Maybelle (played at 120 MPH by Stockard Channing), throws around
one liners in a second-rate impression of Vera Charles to Susann's
Auntie Mame. But the one-liners aren't funny, and the characters
evaporates when asked for any dramatic scenes. Only David Hyde
Pierce, as Susann's bookish editor Michael Hastings, achieves
emotional levels; his honest response to Susann's cancer diagnosis
is refreshing in the stale air of the film's third act.
ISN'T SHE GREAT does a great disservice to its
subject, its creators, and its performers. In some way, however,
it complements the mystery of Susann's success. The queen of trash
novels, Susann astounded the publishing world with her unexplainable
meteoric success. Thirty years later, the movie of her life astounds
by being unable to explain her meteoric success. Was she great?
Certainly. But we're not sure why.
