Rumour Has It

The long-circulating rumour in sunny, wealthy Pasadena is that novelist Charles Webb based ‘The Graduate’ on real individuals. So, when journo Jennifer Aniston returns home and wonders why she’s never felt like she belongs with her own family, a lightbulb starts to illuminate. Her mum’s dead, which eliminates the Katherine Ross character in the movie, but if brassy grandma Shirley MacLaine is Anne Bancroft, then who’s Dustin Hoffman? And is he really her dad? The trail leads to smoothie media magnate Kevin Costner, and that’s where it starts getting complicated – and substantially less amusing than you’d expect from the intriguing scenario.

Reiner’s sleepy direction smothers the material, which needed much more edge to begin to take off, while the cast are uniformly at their worst. Aniston in particular is an exasperating collection of tics in response to a character on the unplayable side of ditsy. Her romantic scenes with Costner would be creepy enough without the incestuous overtones, while Mark Ruffalo’s wasted as the faithful stand-by boyfriend. A glossy catastrophe.