A real long con

>> Heartbreakers is an excruciating two hours

by MARK SLUTSKY

What a gruesome, staggering mess Heartbreakers is. And what a waste of a talented cast! Not even the combined efforts of Sigourney Weaver, Gene Hackman, Ray Liotta and Jennifer Love Hewitt--whose pair of "talents" are self-consciously exploited for all they're worth--can salvage this nonsense from its ruthlessly awful script, which took no less than three guys to write.

The new comedy from director David Mirkin (Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion) is a movie about a mother-daughter pair of con artists. Their method is simple and seemingly effective. Weaver, the mom, seduces and marries some rich asshole; Hewitt proceeds to lure the mark into a compromising position. Divorce and a large settlement follow. When they put the moves on Hackman, a rich tobacco magnate, Hewitt decides to try to make it on her own, also working a lovably scruffy bar owner (Jason Lee of Almost Famous) at the same time. Naturally, she breaks the "first rule" of conning--darn it, she falls in love.

You can imagine the ensuing mess. Purportedly a comedy, Heartbreakers gets so hand-wringingly caught up in the twists and turns of its lousy plot--and barely even manages to tell what is essentially a very simple story--that the yuks never materialize. In exchange, pretty much everything in the movie is based around Hewitt's breasts, which deserve their own screen credit. Plus, every character is given one joke or character trait that seems to be repeated or emphasized in every scene. Hackman, for instance, is a cigarette tycoon, so the laughs come from the very funny fact that he really enjoys cigarettes, and talks about them all the time. He likes them so much that he doesn't like people who don't smoke. Now that's comedy!

Rarely does a film come along that makes one wistfully remember Dana Carvey's con-man vehicle Opportunity Knocks, which, next to this, looks like a David Mamet entry. In the '80s, at least filmmakers had the sense to keep dumb comedies down to 90 minutes; Heartbreakers is a gruelling and baffling two hours long. Where were those slice-and-dice studio bastards when this thing was screened? Heartbreakers is one of those twisted studio accomplishments: a movie that manages to take a promising set-up and some terrific actors and turn it all into an unwatchable mishmash.

Heartbreakers opens Friday, March 23