over rated, but still good

Rating: 7/10 (10 December 2001)

Julia Roberts got a reported $20 million for this movie, which is based on a true story. In it she plays the title character, a single mother who goes to work at a law firm and ends up finding evidence that a big gas company polluted a small town's drinking water. To tell you the truth I was expecting a bit more from this movie, considering it's large box office intake and the popularity of it's star. This is by no means to say that Erin Brockovich is a bad movie, in fact it's a pretty good one, but I'm still not sure it was worthy of all the acclaim it got. My main problem was there were no moments that were really defining or dramatic and although at the end the evil corporation has to fork out almost $400 million (the largest ever paid in a direct-action lawsuit), that would mean nothing to a $28 billion company. There's not much courtroom drama, in fact there's hardly any, director Steven Sodenberg chose to focus on Robert's character and the people she affected. The one thing that really impressed me about this movie was Julia Robert's performance. We are so used to seeing her play the same innocent characters in all of her films, that it started to seem like that was all she could do. With this role she proves she actually can act, and does it quite well. She is thourally convincing as Brockovich and is the main reason this movie works (she's also the reason why it made so much). NOTE: The real Erin Brockovich has a cameo as a waitress.