Witty, funny, heart-breaking, and sassy.

Rating: 8/10 (12 March 2000)

It should be stated at the outset that I am a rabid Steven Soderbergh fan, so my opinion may be slightly biased. But this film still really did it for me. I know, you're thinking "Do we need another little-guy-takes-on-the-corperate-giant movie?" No, of course not. But this film manages to make it interesting again. The human drama, which is of course the centerpiece for any such story, and seemed so forced in films such as A Civil Action, came across as achingly real. And the performances. Ah, Steven, no one call pull a performance out of an actor like you. Having never been a Julia Roberts fan, I was blown away by her in this film. She was... REAL. I was able to forget that it was the "Pretty Woman" on the screen. In fact, the whole film was real. The broke single mom lives in a dump of a trailer which is not nicer than my apartment, as I see so often in movies. The woman dying of cancer is emaciated and hard to look at, not Cameron Diaz with a shaved head.
Anyway, enough rambling. Great movie, fun to see with a crowd, lots of laughs and lots of heart tugs. Watch for the real Erin Brockovich as a waitress near the beginning.