Reviewed by Peter Veugelaers © 2005
- Almost phony baloney

 You could think that the trick in this movie is its turnabout on the supposed background to the 1967 movie The Graduate: Sarah Huttinger (Jennifer Aniston) could be the daughter of Beau Burroughs (Kevin Costner), supposedly the inspiration behind Dustin Hoffman’s character in that movie. There is a sense that this was made with whispers of in-crowd Hollywood excitement where making movies and movies themselves are discussed in a suspended air of life blood, which could be why lovers of movies thought to make a movie with a movie referenced in it. I digress.

 But this is not really about the behind the scenes of The Graduate. Sarah is stuck in her job as a journalist and is unsure of getting married to a lawyer (Mark Ruffalo). She is going through a “pre-mid life crisis”, as her boyfriend calls it, and she is unsure of her place in the family circle. When a whisper surfaces that she might have another father, who is her blood one, all her identity issues go in search for Beau Burroughs, an Internet millionaire now, the man she suspects to have impregnated Sarah’s mother one week before her marriage to Earl. This is Sarah’s journey; this movie is about her, not The Graduate. And the rest is history: apart from enjoying some of her journey, it finishes with a clump rather than a bang, a big is that all, rather than astonishment. It is all pretty predictable.

 Romantic comedies have a tendency to sentimentalise feelings, where real issues are buried underneath, which in this movie get swathed in meaningless words and gestures. The reality is more meaningful. Rumor Has It has scenes which die because they don’t convince and although it wants you to believe in the moment, the moment doesn’t let everything which could be said out onto the screen.