May 12-18, 2005

movies

Flogged

Face/off: Jane Fonda and Jennifer Lopez go toe-to-toe.

Jane Fonda and J. Lo do penance and make a killing.

by Cindy Fuchs

Jane Fonda's been extra-busy. The promotional campaign for her new book, My Life So Far, has made the 68-year-old icon visible in brand new ways. Her broadly resonant memories and polarizing political status have provided all kinds of grist for talk-show regaling (her interviews with Letterman and Charlie Rose were especially entertaining). Still, depending on who you are, she remains her father's daughter, Barbarella, an Oscar winner, Hanoi Jane, the workout-tape queen, or Mrs. Ted Turner, no matter what new material she offers up for public consumption.

The book tour is so grand and galvanizing, in fact, that you kind of wish she hadn't also dipped into the whole comeback business. Monster-in-Law is the sort of dull and exasperating affair that you wish didn't get made. Fonda plays Viola Fields, an unoriginally pathetic celebrity interviewer of the Baba Wawa sort, all bustling and big-eyed and self-adoring. Having survived a series of husbands and a brutal globe-trotting career, she has arrived at the top of her heap only to learn at film's start that she's been fired so the network can hire a younger, blonder, airier version of herself. Viola's devastation — so personal and so acute — leads directly to a public meltdown when she assaults, on her talk show set, a Britney Spears-ish, bare-midriffed performer with no notion of what the words "Roe v. Wade" mean. Shipped off to a clinic to recuperate, Viola can't even imagine what difficulty is headed her way — namely, J.Lo.

OK, not precisely. Jennifer Lopez appears here as the latest, best version of herself: the sensible, kewpie-doll-voiced, proud-of-her-booty Charlie, currently an aspiring fashion designer with two best friends (the dark-haired girl cynic and the adorable gay man) and numerous jobs (temping, dog-walking, Little League coaching, yoga instructing, catering). As tends to happen in robustly formulaic romantic comedies, Charlie is in love with Viola's doctor son, Kevin (Michael Vartan). Charlie and Viola are on a collision course. Can you even imagine the fun and fireworks when they clash?

Actually, you can, as the film's promotional campaign has already showed off the more elaborate head-ons, both fantastic (Viola smashing Charlie's face into a cake) and "real" (slapping one another silly). As Kevin stands by (or runs off for doctorly business) in dubious ignorance, the women go at it. Initially awed by Viola's impressive rep and her crying jags, sweet Charlie tries hard to accommodate her utterly whipped fiance's wishes; putting up with his recently traumatized mom's booze-fueled emotional roller-coastering is a passing phase.

Charlie and you know better, of course: Viola's abusiveness is long-established and well-honed. Because Charlie is the nice J.Lo (no diva she), she doesn't fight back until it's absolutely plain Viola's been deceiving everyone in order to get her way. Here, heck breaks loose, partly encouraged by Viola's long-suffering assistant Ruby (Wanda Sykes). Ruby gives back as well as she gets, occasionally offering tempering advice but mostly enabling all manner of fierce histrionics while commenting from the sidelines. Sykes is easily the liveliest element in the film, playing audience stand-in and resident smart-ass. The fact that she's black and surrounded, particularly at Viola's mansion, by literal and metaphorical whiteness only underlines her welcome distinctiveness and her caricatured wisdom.

The problem is not that the women — including the abiding Elaine Stritch, who makes a late appearance as Viola's own vicious mother-in-law — are mean or selfish or ghoulishly broad. That's a given for the genre. What is galling is that this is (mostly) what's left for women of a certain age or public temperament: to make fun of the awfulness for which they have been known and heckled throughout their careers, whether lengthy or, in Lopez's case, relatively brief.

While it's true that Fonda's media-battering has taken a particularly political shape (having as much to do with her era as her actions) and that Lopez can't even imagine the sort of respect Fonda once and still occasionally commands, the two form a continuum of ambition, success and widely broadcast implosions and meltdowns. Reviled or chastised for selling themselves, for being ballsy or wielding power in public forums (from movies to workout tapes to CD sales and fragrances), Fonda, Lopez and to an extent Sykes have turned their seeming threats into commodities.

And so they sell themselves some more. Though the pathologies they embody — greed, drive, egotism, pick one — tend to be framed as individual, they are symptomatic and well-rewarded. It might be good to see them get paid, that is, to get something out of this terrible bargain, but Fonda and Lopez the products are equally redundant and repetitive, ground out by ancient machinery (not so unlike Spears the product; her version of this movie is only a few years away). Arriving and resisting, bailing out and coming back — they're all only more of the same.

Monster-in-Law Directed by Robert Luketic A New Line release Opens Friday at area theaters