Slick heart warmer.

Rating: 6/10 (6 October 2006)

These kinds of films are beginning to form a genre unto themselves. "Marie," "Silkwood," "Afterburn," "Guerin," "Norma Rae", and "Brokovich." Elements, too, in other successful heart warmers like "Mask" and "Class Action".
The basic idea is to pit a lower-class David against a multi billion-dollar Goliath and have the underdog win. (Maybe I should have included "Rocky" in that list.) Well, Erin Brokovich is the real thing, a trailer-park floozy with messy hair, a quick vulgar mouth, and boobs that look like two helium balloons about to pop up out of her push-up bra. No wonder her female coworkers hate her. Not just her looks though. She's a human dynamo at work. She collects something like 640 signed affidavits over a week and the stuffy partners at her law firm gawk and ask how she did it. "I went out and distributed sexual favors," she says. "Six hundred and forty BJs in five days. I'm tired." (The camera lingers on her triumphant expression so we can share her joy in humiliating her superiors.) It's very slickly done. Her life is filled with travails. I mean, out of work, three fatherless children, rear ended by some rich dope in a Mercedes. Fortunately there's a guy.
Therein is an illustration of a slight problem. These folks look real enough on the surface but they're actually ringers. Erin, despite her cutting sarcasm, doesn't really speak much like a redneck and neither do the other people of her class. Nobody smokes. (Might drive away the intended audience.) The guy she falls in with is introduced as some kind of biker/doper wearing ragged jeans, a faded bandanna wrapped around his head, a beard, and a pony tale -- revving up his chopper after he moves in next door. But it's all a front. The bandanna is soon dropped and we get to know him for the quiet, quietly reassuring, supportive, child-loving Mensch that he truly is. When the trappings of bikerhood are gone -- and we never see the bike again -- he sits there in silence while Erin pours out her woes and, what with his neat beard, his reading glasses and his serenity and his slight, tolerant smile, he is more a Jewish psychotherapist than a biker.
Of course he has to pack up and leave her at some point otherwise the movie would be absent one clichÃ©. They're both sad about the split, and it doesn't last that long, but, as he explains it, he never sees her anymore because she's always working late. He does everything but say, "You're already married -- to your job." There's never a moment's doubt about who is good and who is bad in a movie like this. Erin is authentic and good, like the earth before it was poisoned by PG&E. The fraudulent biker is also good. We know it right away, although she doesn't. Erin's boss, Finney, is good too, although a little gruff at times, kind of like Lou Grant. The victims of the lethal chromium isotope are all good too. None of them is in it for the money. The new partners that Finney acquires to help him cover his expenses are on the right side but they're pretentious. They dress in expensive tailored clothing and are aghast when Erin swears. The poor woman who represents the new partners looks as if she took baths in a mild solution of hydrochloric acid. There is no life either in her or on her. Her hair is pulled back severely, she wears a suit and tie, and her makeup gives her a cadaverous glow.
It's not a thoughtful film by any measure, but it does get the job done. Goliath is vanquished by David and we applaud as the end credits roll. The performances are adequate -- no better than that, but no worse either. Sometimes the film borrows entire modules from other successful movies. The resentment of the antagonistic informant who answers the door when the investigator knocks. ("Verdict," "All the President's Men".) The heroine caught up in the cause that threatens her love life. ("Silkwood," "Norma Rae.") The script makes fun of a jealous fat woman. ("Kiss my ***, Krispy Kreme.") It's that kind of movie.