Marc Seguy’s blog

ISN'T SHE MARVELLOUS
A membrane review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2000 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): * 1/2

Andrew Bergman (STRIPTEASE) rolls out the treacle trucks in ISN'T SHE
GREAT, a story based on the life of Jacqueline Susann ("The Valley of
the Dolls"). Giving her life a bizarrely saccharine, Ozzie-and-Harriet
gloss, Bergman turns the queen of sleaze into a literary heroine. And
he makes her life so excessively cute and over-the-top fun that you may
gag. At any minute you expect the cast to stop and ask the audience "Is
everybody happy?"

Starring Bette Midler, as Jacqueline Susann, and Nathan Lane, as her
husband and agent, Irving Mansfield, the movie, thanks to Bergman's
overdirection, manages to bring out the most annoying parts of each
actor. Although the movie is short, you'll find yourself secretly
hoping for the obviously fatal conclusion — Susann is diagnosed early
in the picture with cancer — to occur much sooner than it does.

Filmed by Karl Walter Lindenlaub with bright, peppy colors and scored by
Burt Bacharach for maximum cloyingness, the film doesn't have a subtle
moment. Although Jacqueline wrote about a world of sex and drugs, the
movie provides no background on this. In the picture, Jacqueline acts
like a woman who sometimes talks dirty but who doesn't have any sins,
save her tacky wardrobes. She does sometime speak harshly to God, who
appears as the sunlight that filters through a Central Park tree.

As Jacqueline's lap dog of a husband, Nathan Lane plays obsequiousness
to the hilt. During her fake suicide episode, he walks into the lake to
save her before she drowns. He stops first, of course, to slowly take
off his shoes and sox and roll up his pants' legs.

The only saving graces in the movie are two of the supporting cast, to
whom writer Paul Rudnick (IN & OUT) gives some of the few lines with any
possibilities. Stockard Channing, as Jacqueline's smart-mouthed friend
Flo, likes to tell it like it is. When Irving suggests a book to
Jacqueline as the salvation for her sagging acting career, Flo, not
realizing that he means writing, tells him how stupid his idea is. "Oh
come on, Irving," Flo says, "reading never solved anything."

As her anal-retentive, Brooks-Brothers-dressed editor, Michael, David
Hyde Pierce gives a prissy performance that's cute at first, but it's a
one joke idea. His slow transformation out of his regimented life is as
predictable as the rest of the story.

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"Talent isn't everything," Flo says. And the mere collection of a
talented cast does not ensure that the movie can demonstrate any. ISN'T
SHE GREAT was probably a bad idea from the beginning, and nothing in
this movie convinces us otherwise.

ISN'T SHE GREAT runs 1:30. It is rated R for language and would be
acceptable for teenagers.

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