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Movie Review: Pretty smart woman Julia Roberts shows her stuff as a real-life crusader in 'Erin Brockovich'
Friday, March 17, 2000 By RON WEISKIND Post-Gazette Movie Editor
Don't judge a book by its cover. The title character in "Erin Brockovich" looks like a walking definition of trailer trash: big hair, low-cut blouses, foul mouth, two ex-husbands, three kids and no money.
This unlikely protagonist goes on to spearhead an investigation that results in a multimillion-dollar judgment against a huge utility company. No one would believe it except that it's a true story.
Rating: R for language.
Starring: Julia Roberts, Albert Finney.
Director: Steven Soderbergh.
3 stars.
Appearances can be deceiving, which looks to be the theme of the latest film by Steven Soderbergh, the resolutely maverick director who has crafted his most commercial movie, in the best sense of the word.
"Erin Brockovich" finds the man who launched the modern era of independent film with "sex, lies and videotape" directing the biggest female star in Hollywood, Julia Roberts. The setup -- overmatched real-life crusader exposes wrongdoing by industrial giant -- doesn't win any awards for originality. The most recent examples of the genre: "A Civil Action" and "The Insider."
Soderbergh even tells the story in linear fashion, abandoning his standard technique of fracturing the time line and jumping us from present to past to future and back. He made it a key element of "The Underneath," "Out of Sight" and his most recent film, "The Limey."
Yet "Erin Brockovich" still manages to avoid most of the cliches that a stock Hollywood production would shove down our throats. Soderbergh, true to his independent roots, plays against our expectations of the genre, his star and his characters. This is one book -- equal parts funny and dramatic and always entertaining -- that goes against the type of its glossy cover.
It begins in the very first scene when Erin, gaudily attired in a dress designed to accentuate her physical assets, attempts with increasing desperation to convince an aghast doctor to give her a job in his office. I found Roberts unconvincing at first glance -- it's as if she were slumming.
But, like the real Erin (who makes a brief appearance in the film as a waitress), the star doesn't give up -- and triumphs in the end.
When Erin is injured in a car crash, she hires a shaggy, older attorney named Ed Masry (Albert Finney), who proceeds to lose the case in court. Ed's winding down his career, or so he thinks. Erin, mad at the world and especially at Ed, just shows up in his cluttered little office one day and bullies him into putting her on the payroll.
It doesn't take long to realize that he's way out of his league with this cheeky spitfire, who seems to have acquired much of her wardrobe at a bimbo convention. It all seems calculated to offset Roberts' image as a glamourpuss and allow her to submerge into the character in our minds.
Erin's cleavage becomes a running joke. But it also becomes an asset, as does her brassiness and her common touch. While working on a routine file, she puzzles over the presence of medical records in what appears to be a real-estate case. She gets the distracted Ed to let her investigate. It turns out that an electric plant has polluted the water supply in a small Mojave Desert town, causing serious medical problems for the residents.
Erin flaunts her figure to get access to records, and connects with the townspeople, who are just ordinary folk like herself. All the while, she's also juggling her responsibilities as a mother and trying to find time for her increasingly disgruntled lover, George (Aaron Eckhart). He's yet another of the movie's deceiving appearances -- a biker who's a soft touch with kids who all but becomes their surrogate parent.
Likewise, the town of Hinkley appears to be nothing more than six shacks and a tavern, hard by the hulking form of a huge utility plant. But when we get inside these houses, we find unexpectedly comfortable quarters occupied by real people, not caricatures. Soderbergh exhibits a real feel for the rhythms and the ambiance of small, windblown towns.
He also has a knack for avoiding the obvious. There's not a single courtroom scene in the movie, no big emotional reconciliations (they're all matter of fact), no woman-in-jeopardy moments (just a single threatening phone call). Soderbergh and screenwriter Susannah Grant keep the emphasis on the people, on making them real, on seeing through their facades -- Erin's tacky togs, Julia's star image.
Instead, we see Roberts the actress and Brockovich the survivor, who are much more interesting -- and fun.
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