Entertainment Weekly
May 9, 2005
EW Role Call: Jane Fonda
Hollywood's prodigal daughter returns in 'Monster-in-Law'
By Gary Susman, Entertainment Weekly
SPOILERS!
Don't expect ''Monster-in-Law'' (opening May 13) to be a grand summation of Jane Fonda's four-decade, two-Oscar film career.
For one thing, the ''Meet the Parents''-style comedy -- about a woman named Viola Fields (Fonda) who tries to sabotage the engagement of her son (Michael Vartan) to his fiancée (Jennifer Lopez) -- isn't the Serious Statement that moviegoers once expected from the earnest political activist and grande dame thespian.
Then again, one might not expect the 67-year-old Fonda to be in a movie at all, since she hasn't made one in 15 years, having famously quit acting after her 1990 flop ''Stanley & Iris,'' followed by her marriage to Ted Turner.
Now, four years after that marriage ended, she's back, with both a revealing new memoir (''My Life So Far'') and a comedy in which she takes second billing to J. Lo. So, what gives?
''I wanted to have fun,'' Fonda recently told Entertainment Weekly. ''And I've never played anybody like [Viola Fields]. Totally over-the-top, outrageous. I loved it -- I want to do a sequel.''
''Fun'' isn't a word often associated with Jane Fonda movies, except maybe early efforts, like the fizzy Neil Simon romantic comedy ''Barefoot in the Park'' (1967), or the bubblegum sci-fi sex comedy ''Barbarella'' (1968).
Over the next two decades, Fonda films often had an agenda (like the Vietnam War homefront drama ''Coming Home'' or the feminist workplace farce ''Nine to Five''), even if Fonda never let politics get in the way of good storytelling or finely tuned, emotional performances.
At their core, Fonda's characters are fiercely strong women, as the following gallery shows. Or, as Lopez put it at the ''Monster-in-Law'' premiere, describing to EW her fight scene with Fonda: ''Barbarella can throw a punch.''
© Cable News Network LP, LLLP. 2005
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