Isn't She Great

In my opinion, this movie was just "ok". There was something about the acting that just wasn't right. I can't put my finger on it. Perhaps it was the roles that Midler and Lane played. They seemed very superficial. I wasn't convinced that they were the characters. I did like the actor from "Frasier". Although it was not a total "bomb", I would not watch this movie again.

A good way to gauge the end results of this film disaster would be to temporarily resurrect the personage of Jacqueline Susann to get her reaction. I think she would have laughed it off the screen, but not amused laughter: aching, bitter, cynical laughter. I don't see it as a camp film ("Valley of the Dolls" was a camp film); this is a pure, unadulterated error in judgment by many talented people with honorable intentions. The picture looks good and has the nice addition of Burt Bacharach's music score (with the occasional Dionne Warwick vocal--natch), but it is unbearably miscast. When was the last time you can remember Bette Midler failing to ignite on screen (her TV sitcom not accepted)? Bette strains for a low-key effect in the serious moments, but it's just not in her to be pensive; her raucous scenes also derail, and this is due in part to poor direction, poor editing choices, and also poor judgment from Midler, who lets herself be seen on-camera struggling (a struggling comedienne is about as funny as a drowning one--here she does both). A sequence in the film that has hubby-to-be Irving Mansfield following Jackie into a NYC lake is both outrageous and deadening. The factually-incorrect script aside, "Isn't She Great" (no question mark?) is quite simply a beleaguered movie: vapid, colorless, unfocused, and out-of-touch. Susann might've asked what her 'cut' was and then forgot the entire thing. *1/2 from ****

This movie is supposedly about Jacqueline Susann (Bette Midler) and husband Irving Mansfield (Nathan Lane). It chronicles how they met, fell in love and how she got "Valley of the Dolls" published. But this movie is a mess...and completely inaccurate.

For starters, Midler doesn't even remotely look like Susann or act like her. I've read at least 3 books on Susann as well as various articles - she was an ambitious, intelligent, driven woman. As Midler portrays her she is stupid, obnoxious, VERY loud and foul-mouthed. I'm no prude but there's way too much swearing from her in this--I have my doubts that Susann ever talked like that. Also they take actual events from Susann's life and fictionalizes them. When she is told in the movie to edit her book she acts like an idiot and refuses to help. In real life, Susann agreed to help make the book better with no fuss. And, Susann had a "Wishing Hill" (as she called it) in Central Park. It was basically a huge pile of rocks where she sat to clear her mind and relax. Here it's turned into a giant tree (????) and we have sequences with Lane and Midler talking, yelling and swearing at it. It's a wonder that those two managed to pull it off without looking like idiots.

As you can see, this is a bad film--but just so much FUN to watch! The incredible costumes and set design are just great--colorful and very true to the period. Some of the lines are actually very funny. Nathan Lane is great as Mansfield and Stockard Channing (as her best friend) and David Hyde Pierce (as her publisher) are hysterical and offer strong support. And Christopher McDonald and John Larroquette throw in cameos. Also John Cleese is on hand but he's wasted. Then there's Midler....she's AWFUL! Loud, shrill and thoroughly unlikable. When she was dying at the end I could have cared less. If she had toned down her performance and not played every scene at full tilt this might have worked. But she doesn't. However, she is fun to watch--a textbook example of how NOT to play a role.

The studio (understandably) threw this film away. It came and went VERY quickly and was a commercial disaster. Still, I'm giving it a 7--it's so incredibly bad that it's fun to watch! A must-see on that level.

ISN'T SHE GREAT (2000) ** Bette Midler, Nathan Lane, Stockard Channing, David Hyde Pierce, John Cleese, Amanda Peet. Before there was Jackie Collins and Amazon.com there was Jacqueline Susann. That is prior to the subgenre of 'trashy romance' novels found in your neighborhood pharmacy and the glut that is now the conglomerate superbookstore –i.e. marketing and focus groups for the masses! – there was Jacqueline Susann, whose bawdy, vulgar and tasteless novels were ultimately candy for the average American reader who gobbled her tomes faster than she could churn them out. In Andrew Bergman's look at the queen of the acquired taste, who else could portray a larger than life figurehead than the estimable Divine Miss M herself, Bette Midler.

Midler gives it her all with her trademark ball-breaking brio as the celebrity craven author whose indefatigable image fashioning was only matched by par by her long-suffering but ever devoted husband and business partner Irving Mansfield (touché Lane, making their onscreen presence a once in a lifetime pairing to appreciative audiences), who used all his show biz savvy – no matter how gauche or seemingly stooping manners of barnstorming the country to every podunk backwater stationery store or spreading the word to a busload of school children – to make Susann a giantess among the mortals in the writing field.

Based on a reminiscence by New Yorker's Michael Korda, the fact that the real Susann was no sweetheart and a real tough cookie with a few sad hurdles – her ongoing bout with cancer and the institutionalization of her only child who suffered from autism – are casually sugar-coated by Bergman (whose impeccable credits include a plethora of the comic pantheon including 'The In-Laws', 'The Freshman' and 'Blazing Saddles') and the sharply sticky screenplay by scathing scribe Paul Rudnick ('In & Out') wisely overlook her obvious flaws and instead center on the unlikely union of two borderline caricatures of the entertainment field, and their questionable romance. But Midler and Lane surpass the film's shortcomings with their theatrical overplaying, which is arguably suitable, as well as the always welcome Channing, one of our most underrated comic actresses, whose succor in her line readings are a stitch (when Susann belabors she doesn't know how to write a book, Channing says with aplomb, 'Talent isn't everything.'); she's like the salt in a margarita.

Also lending able support is Hyde Pierce in another variation of his tv persona from 'Frasier' as Susann's stuffed shirt editor and Cleese as the Nehru jacketed publisher, both in their element here.

The one thing that seems to be missing is it seems outdated and quite a lot to compress in a film that has the dubious distinction of telling the story of a woman who wasn't very nice nor well respected, but then again that hasn't been the case of celebrity history in this country, so I'm not even going to argue that!

Great oneliners by Paul Rudnick and a great turn by Stockard Channing and the always funny and fantastic Bette make this an enjoyable movie. But it doesn't really hold up to much scrutiny. And when is Hollywood going to stop using talented, classically trained Hispanic actresses to play over the top, stereotyped cleaning women?