Rumor Has It

Rumor Has It (Director: Rob Reiner)



















Reiner's last movie was the much-maligned Alex & Emma, and generally the guy hasn't made a winner in 10 years, which was The American President. After that he did Ghosts of Mississippi and The Story of Us. Before then, the guy made legendary films such as This is Spinal Tap, Stand By Me, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally, Misery, and A Few Good Men. Quite possibly no one had a better record than him until he did North. He stuck American President in after that, but it hasn't been good since then. This is written by Ted Griffin, who had his hand in Ravenous, Ocean's Eleven, and Matchstick Men.

In 1992's The Player, a screenwriter (actual Graduate screenwriter Buck Henry) tries to pitch The Graduate II. It goes like this--Okay, here it is: The Graduate, Part II! Ben and Elaine are married still, living in a big old spooky house in Northern California somewhere. Mrs. Robinson, her aging mother, lives with them. She�s had a stroke. And they�ve got a daughter in college � Julia Roberts, maybe. It�ll be dark and weird and funny � with a stroke.�

Yes, it's pretty ridiculous. And although Rumor Has It isn't exactly trying to be a sequel to The Graduate, it is semi-dependent on that great film. I'm not the only one who has brought up The Player scene. I found a discussion about it here. This is back in 2004 when the script was being bought.

In this, Sarah Huttinger (Jennifer Aniston) is engaged to Jeff Daly (Mark Ruffalo), but she's getting cold feet already. She sees her sister Annie (Mena Suvari) super-happy and about to be married herself, and it seems like she's genetically predisposed to have this kind of hangup. Her grandmother Katharine (Shirley MacLaine) was in a loveless marriage and she cheated on her husband with Beau Burroughs (Kevin Costner), who later ran off with her daughter, a la The Graduate, which rumor has it was inspiration for Burroughs' schoolmate Charles Webb's novel and later movie. Sarah gets a premonition that her mother, before marrying dad (Richard Jenkins, who's in everything this year), slept with Burroughs and that Burroughs is her real dad. She finds him, finds out it's not true, and just like mom and grandmom gets nailed by Burroughs, which causes complications for her impending marriage.

There's not much in the way of a point for all this. The movie is not interested in making this a funny Graduate riff. And all the setup for that is wasted, so it's questionable as to why they even brought up that movie at all. Probably because standing alone, without the movie to hinge its plot on, it would be completely devoid of ideas. Intrigue could have come from the is-it-or-isn't-it-The-Graduate? plotline, but there's no real fun to be had here. And the ending is ridiculous. Hey, I'm sure it'll float many a boat when it opens Christmas Day. Not mine.