Rumour Has It

This is a wry comedy about a young woman who learns, many years after Mrs Robinson seduced Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate, that her dysfunctional family might have been the inspiration for the scandalous book and the hit film.

Unfortunately, this neat premise, spun briskly by screenwriter Ted Griffin, leads to a familiar journey of self-discovery almost totally devoid of laughs.

Were it not for Shirley MacLaine, who doesn't so much chew the scenery as swallow it whole as the acerbic grand dame of the family, Rob Reiner's new picture would be an interminable drag.

In her perfectly coiffured guise as the potential real-life Mrs Robinson, MacLaine slinks through every frame like a wildcat past her prime and in search of fresh meat. Her droll one-liners reach a hysterical climax during a crossed-wires phone conversation.

Aniston, who is a gifted comic actress in her own right, pales in her veteran co-star's shadow. Her heroine's vacillations barely raise a smile and, by the time she gets round to opening her heart - "I can live without you... I just don't want to" the only feeling we're left with is mild indigestion.

Sarah Huttinger (Aniston) is a thirty-something journalist who writes obituaries for The New York Times. She has always felt an outsider in her family and struggles to connect with her father Earl (Jenkins) and seems the polar opposite of her perky sister Annie (Suvari), who is about to marry her handsome tennis partner, Scott (Sandvoss).

Returning home to Pasadena to attend her sister's wedding, Sarah relishes the opportunity to trade quips with her feisty grandmother Katharine (MacLaine). However, in her alcohol-fuelled delirium, Katharine discloses painful and potentially embarrassing secrets from the past, such as Sarah's mother's dalliance with another man, shortly before her wedding.

Sarah is stunned and she begins to question her impending marriage to her loving boyfriend Jeff (Ruffalo), leading to an orchestrated encounter with handsome billionaire Beau Burroughs (Costner), her mother's high-school sweetheart.

Rumour Has It was reportedly beset with all kinds of behind-the-scenes problems, which may account for the workmanlike result. Aniston doesn't spark any sexual chemistry with either of her two male co-stars, which makes a mockery of Sarah's to-ing and froing between Jeff and Beau. Ruffalo, who was better in Just Like Heaven, may as well have sent a cardboard cut out for the little screen time his character is given.

In Simon and Garfunkel's song Mrs Robinson from The Graduate, they croon, "Every way you look at this, you lose". How right they were.