A scantily clad premise that would at best have been a light-hearted farce goes in search of a heart-tugging denouement and doesn't find it.
Comment
12/27/05
Rumor Has It... (2005)
20
%
Tomatometer
How does the Tomatometer work 
Reviews Counted:106
Fresh:21
Rotten:85
Average Rating:4.4/10
Consensus: This riff on The Graduate has a solid cast, but is too lightweight to fully register.
Runtime: 1 hr 37 mins
Genre: Comedies
US Box Office: $42,747,869
Synopsis: With the romantic comedy RUMOR HAS IT, director Rob Reiner (WHEN HARRY MET SALLY) attempts the tricky task of creating a film based on an already celebrated classic, 1967's THE GRADUATE. Starring... [More]
Starring: Jennifer Aniston, Kevin Costner, Shirley MacLaine, Mark Ruffalo
Director: Rob Reiner
Reviews for Rumor Has It...
The result is a wayward movie, sort of like a trip to Florida from New York via Cairo, Ill. -- there's not much to do in Cairo, but there are several worthy stops (Indianapolis, Memphis) along the way.
12/27/05
Not much to laugh about.
12/27/05
A funny idea, alas, doesn't necessarily make for a funny movie.
12/27/05
It fails artistically but also philosophically, in that it rebuts the spirit of the earlier film, while offering nothing attractive in its place.
12/27/05
Here's a rumor for ya: this is pretty bland stuff, despite all the clever people involved and good intentions to pull off a hip dramedy. Ultimately, Rumor Has It doesn't know what it wants to be.
12/27/05
When it came time to make this particular movie, director Rob Reiner and writer Ted Griffin got all tangled up with a joke they couldn't quite get right.
12/27/05
If Aniston really wants to break away from her TV roots, she needs to start picking better material.
12/27/05
Becalmed in this ghastly, would-be comedy, Aniston can do little to mitigate its ickiness.
12/27/05
Seeing [Reiner] work now is like watching Willie Mays hobble around in a Mets uniform during that pathetic final year when he hit .211.
12/27/05
Incest is not the sturdiest foundation on which to build a romantic comedy.
12/27/05
[The film is] rendered in a witless, banal environment that makes the whole thing pointless as it creeps to its oddly conformist conclusions.
12/27/05
Top CriticA slight movie in-joke in search of a feature-length reason to exist. It's never found.
12/27/05
The film is rife with weird edits and odd looping, so you can guess that something bad happened in the editing room or thereabouts, like, maybe someone noticed the story was nonexistent.
12/27/05
Rumor Has It . . . never ends up finding the right direction, in the process wasting an excellent cast -- particularly Costner and Ruffalo -- and a great premise.
12/27/05
Without a plausible story, Rumor Has It has only its performances to get it by, and a very familiar performance -- from Shirley MacLaine, as Beau's still bawdy, one-time seductress -- is the best we get.
12/27/05
By its final scenes, Rumor has faded into the haze of comforting mediocrity, and I could no longer tell whether the filmmakers wanted to mock Pasadena or move there.
12/27/05
Nichols' satirically pungent ambitions are reduced to an epiphany about love and marriage -- and an unconvincing one at that.
12/27/05
More dramatic and less comedic than advertised, this isn't something that'll leave a lasting impression, but then, Mike Nichols didn't think The Graduate would either.
12/27/05
Top CriticHand much of the credit to director Rob Reiner, who consistently hits the right comic notes.
12/27/05
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