Seattle Weekly
May 11-17, 2005
This Week's Attractions: "Monster-in-Law"
Opens Fri., May 13, at Pacific Place and others
By Brian Miller
SPOILERS!
She waited 15 years for this? Having flooded the TV talk shows to promote her new autobiography and—in the same breath—apologize for her, ahem, little North Vietnamese escapade three decades back, Jane Fonda has chosen a comeback vehicle that isn't even her vehicle. Jennifer Lopez is clearly the driver, and it's from her perspective—about to be married to a hunky Los Angeles surgeon (Michael Vartan)—that Fonda's meddling future mother-in-law looms. J.Lo's fans, almost all of whom were born after the Vietnam War, may be forgiven for asking, "Jane who?" After all, 15 years is more than a lifetime for a very large and profitable segment of the moviegoing public. To them, I suspect, the laughs come not from Fonda as bitch but from Fonda as old woman willing to wear soup on her face. And pasta sauce on her white Gucci outfit. And to swill cough syrup for the alcohol content. And to tackle a Britney Spears clone on national TV. To those who remember Fonda as an actress with two Oscars under her belt, she's showing us her steely core beneath politics and personality and family history. In Monster-in-Law, she's a showbiz trooper. If the script requires her to look like a fool, she does—and with gusto. If she can endure having a Vietnam vet spit in her face (as recently happened on her book tour), playing second banana to J.Lo is hardly a problem. She's tough enough to take it. As J.Lo says, "Bring it on, Grandma."
The rest of the movie, directed by Legally Blonde's Robert Luketic, is considerably softer; the only testosterone in evidence is Vartan's stubble, and he's banished to a medical conference for much of the picture. Both J.Lo and Fonda are generally upstaged by their flunkies (the obligatory gay best friend, plus gal pals including Wanda Sykes), who get all the best laughs. The imminent wedding—which out-of-the-nuthouse former TV host Fonda threatens to thwart—is less important than who wears white at the ceremony. The comedy is clumsy and obvious but, compared to the Farrelly brothers or Meet the Fockers (where Barbra Streisand finds herself in similar postmenopausal straits), almost sophisticated. Almost.
A word about J.Lo: Fonda is not the only one far above her material here. In her reaction shots, her lagging line readings, her hand-waving incredulity at Fonda's Wicked Witch of the West, J.Lo makes a charming Cinderella (never mind the mismatched movie references). Monster-in-Law is less about marriage than it is about class, about a woman Fonda calls "a temp . . . a slut . . . a two-bit tramp" marrying above her station. Jane Austen would applaud her bootstrapping temerity (which Elaine Stritch, arriving in a last-minute cameo, articulates quite plainly). I won't say there's any kind of generational passing of the torch here, but if J.Lo ever ventures to Baghdad, you can be sure it'll be with the USO. (PG-13)
© Seattle Weekly 2005
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