ERIN BROCKOVICH - The Ugly
by Shari L. Rosenblum
They tell me Erin Brockovich is a woman's movie -- and it may
speak well to many women - but what it said to me was far from charming
or inspirational. Predictable and cliched, for the most part, despite
Julia Roberts' winning smile and emphasized cleavage, Erin Brockovich
is a cocky little disingenuous class tale. Classic in its disdain for
the well-educated and the well-dressed. Classic in its two-faced approach
to societal ethics.
The good guys are those whose black push-up bras show through their
shirts or whose muscled, Harley-driving, arms are covered with tattoos.
The bad guys are people with jobs who wear suits. The comraderie of
the lawyer class is a negative - that of the working class an embraceable
plus.When Erin repeatedly cuts off lawyer Ed (Albert Finney) because
he isn't speaking to the lower class clients in the proper words, we
know she's right. When Ed makes a similar, but inverted judgment of
Erin with regard to speaking to lawyers in their words, we know, somehow,
that he is wrong. This is not a denial of class prejudice, it's simply
an applauded inversion. And it's nonsense.
And it goes on and on.
Evil are those superficial souls who imagine that someone who disrespects
the environment of a professional office (and its potential clients)
by coming to work dressed like a 10-cent whore, screaming like a fishwife
and swearing like a drunken sailor may also be disrespectful of the
professional work ethic. Or who fail to assume the best of such a person
who does not show for work for an extended period. (We're supposed to
be angered or outraged when Erin's pupik-breaching mini-skirt or overreaching
cleavage raise eyebrows of professional doubt.) But good and justified
are those who mock a woman who comes to work in standard work attire
(assuming she must have a stick up her rear and be shockable by references
to oral sex) - or a woman whose body is neither as young, as fit, nor
as bolstered as the streetwalker's ideal (giggle we must when she's
called "Krispy Kreme"). A woman's movie, indeed.
The acting isn't bad, and director Steven Soderbergh's eye is good
- Julia Roberts is filmed to seduce men into wanting her and women into
wanting to be her - but the story is an artistic failure, its premise
is a social setback, and its moral is an ethical deception.
Other than that . . .
CineScene, 2000
