Going strong on day numero tres and I’m tickled pink that this blog has given me yet another excuse not to brush my hair… I'm far too busy. Without further ado:
ERIN BROCKOVICH
Starring:
-Julia Roberts
-Albert Finney
-Aaron Eckhart
Directed by: Steven Soderbergh
Screenplay Credits: Susannah Grant
MPAA Rating: R – for language and Julia Roberts’ breasts
Julia Roberts is big-haired, single mom Erin Brockovich. Twice divorced with three small kids and cockroaches the size of my fist skittering around her kitchen, Erin is desperate. When a doctor in a Jag runs a red light and t-bones Erin’s car, Erin slaps on a neck brace and takes him to court. Erin’s lawyer – Ed Masry – is unable to win the case. Erin searches for work, repeatedly coming up empty, so she sashays her trailer trash Barbie looking self to Masry’s office and practically hires herself, much to the shock and chagrin of the tastefully dressed office workers.
“Are ya getting’ every word of this down, honey, or am I talkin’ too fast for ya?” – Erin
For some reason totally unbeknownst to me, Ed hires the uppity shrew and Erin is shown the ropes. We learn that Ed, although a confirmed curmudgeon, really cares about people and will go out of his way to help folks. He’ll whine about it, but he’ll still do it.
Cut to Erin tucking her kids in at night and hearing a chorus of motorcycles engines outside her door. She races out and tears into a dirty looking biker named George, dropping f-bombs and telling him to keep it down, seemingly unaware that this gruff looking total stranger might possibly whoop out a knife and slaughter her loved ones. Inexplicably, new neighbor George asks for Erin’s phone number. Turns out he’s a friendly dirty biker.
“Which number do you want, George? … I got numbers comin’ out of my ears. For instance, ten. That’s how many months old my baby girl is. How ‘bout this for a number: six. That’s how old my other daughter is. Eight is the age of my son. Two is how many times I’ve been married and divorced. 16 is the number of dollars in my bank account. 850-3943, that’s my phone number. And with all the numbers I gave you, I’m guessing zero is the number of times you’re gonna call it.” – Erin
Zing.
Cut to the office. Ed plops a box on Erin’s desk, mumbles about real estate and pro bono work, asks why she’s not out to lunch with the girls, and tells her to stop dressing like a slut.
Erin politely informs him that she thinks she looks nice, and she’ll wear whatever the heck she wants, thank you very much.
Erin comes home to find her kids with friendly neighborhood biker dude Goerge, who was there to receive them when the babysitter had an emergency and dropped them off. George has grilled hamburgers and hotdogs and looked after the kids for a good bit of the day. George sticks around to play card games until Erin sends the kiddies toward bed. Somehow George convinces Erin to let him be the new nanny. Not really sure how he managed that, but he did it.
The next day, Erin asks Ed about investigating the pro bono case a little further. He gives her the okay, so she heads out to Hinkley to get the lowdown on the Jensen family, the impending sale of their house to PG & E and their numerous medical problems. Lady Jensen tells Erin all kinds of suspicious sounding things about the giant plant across the way. Apparently they’ve paid for the family’s doctor visits “because of the chromium.”
Erin hits up a smart-talking professor at UCLA who looks like Rolf from The Muppet Show for information. He tells her all about the dangers of hexavalent chromium and sends her to the Hinkley water board to snoop around (but not before checking out her rear, the cad).
Erin throws her boobs around at the impressionable young water board worker and hooks herself up with copies of some incriminating files. PG & E is using hexavalent chromium, and this has polluted the Hinkley groundwater.
Erin rolls into the office to find her desk cleaned out. She’s been fired. The chubby redhead behind the desk gives Erin a hard time, but she’s just jealous because her days of leather miniskirts are way, way over. She seems to take this frustration out on Erin, who serves it back Williams sister style, baby! Booyah!
As it turns out, Ed didn’t know she was off and working, he just assumed she was a loose cannon and bailed on them. This doesn’t change the fact that she’s been fired, so Erin storms home to scream at George, who is lying in the kitchen floor fooling with her sink. She’s angry and upset, but George makes it all better by tearing off her clothes and sucking on her face a little bit. Erin puts on a tiara and talks about world peace.
“Don’t be too nice to me, okay? It makes me nervous.” – Erin
The doorbell rings and it’s Ed with a telegram from Rolf the fancy talking professor, who wants to tell Erin about the legal limit for hexavalent chromium, which apparently PG & E has exceeded. Ed wants the scoop, but Erin won’t give up the goods until Ed promises to hire her back. He does, so Erin invites him in, then lies on the couch to jiggle the baby around while she fills Ed in. Erin twists his arm and manages to finagle a 10% raise and benefits out of him in exchange for the documents she swiped from the water board.
Ed claims they need more proof, so Erin heads back to the water board with her brood in tow for more copies. The water board boy gets a mysterious phone call and tries to get Erin to split, but she stands her ground, reminding him that these files are public record and she has every right to them. Water board boy has no clue how to handle women like Erin, so he just looks around nervously and tries not to vomit.
Erin carts the files back to the law office. They fax the documents to PG & E to show them they mean business and get a response almost immediately. The plant sends some little twerp monkey in a suit to try and buy them off with a pathetic amount of money. Basically, Erin and Ed say, “Nice try, punk” and get rid of him. People start coming out the Hinkley woodworks claiming the chromium might have screwed them up and, before you know it, you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a dying person.
Back at home, Erin’s son is in a snit because she’s missed dinner with the family. Boohoo kid, she’s trying to save lives. Shut up and eat your frozen chicken parts.
Erin and Ed head to Hinkley to get more couples involved with the struggle with PG & E. Erin convinces Ed to go after them with a lawsuit, and manages to squeeze another raise and a company cell phone out of him. She gathers water samples from the plant and the Hinkley area and pokes around at a dead frog before getting a threatening phone call from some heavy-breathing creep trying to scare her away from the water board investigation. Erin muscles through and keeps working hard, but cries in the car because she misses hearing the baby’s first word – ball.
Ed and Erin throw a barbeque for all the poor sick people, and Erin manages to get the skinny on PG & E’s operation from a disgruntled former employee. Erin and Ed talk with food in their mouths and file a lawsuit against PG & E. The veins pop out in Julia’s forehead and she continues to stumble around like a gangly stork in hooker heels.
A judge rules that Ed and Erin can continue with the lawsuit. PG & E is going to trial. The plant’s lawyers drop by Masry’s for an intimidation meeting, but Erin talks about spines and a uterus or two and puts the fear of God into them. She goes home, triumphant, only to find that George has put the kids to bed and packed a bag. Trouble in biker paradise. Erin tries to make him stay, but he doesn’t buy her spiel and splits.
The bottom drops out at work, too, as Ed feels in over his head and has hired a fancy new lawyer and his redhead devil woman assistant (who I’ve seen in a million movies but simply cannot place) to help with the lawsuit. Erin is pissed, but Ed makes it up to her by giving her a shiny new Explorer and a check for $5,000. All better.
Erin gets a chance to go up against the redhead devil woman and shames her hardcore with her impressive knowledge of all 600+ plaintiffs. The smug redhead tries to schmooze the Hinkley citizens and ends up scaring/pissing them off.
Ed holds a town meeting in Hinkley to convince the citizens to sign and back the lawsuit. Somehow Erin gets George to keep the kids for a few days so she can focus on getting signatures with Ed. George and the kids are happily reunited. Erin and her son smile at each other for, like, the first time in days and Erin cries about eggs before going after the rest of the signatures.
The smarmy guy who’s been hitting on Erin at all the Hinkley functions drops a bomb: he’s a former Hinkley plant employee who once destroyed documents and he’s willing to testify. Erin runs out of the bar, curses at her cell phone, calls Ed, then runs back inside to eat peanuts and talk smack about PG & E with her newfound informant, who just happens to have saved documentation.
Long story short, Erin drags George out to the Jensen’s place where she delivers the good news: PG & E is paying out the ears to the tune of $333 million. Mrs. Jensen cries, Julia’s forehead veins pop out for the fifty-eleventh time, and George finally sees the light about Erin’s work and cracks a Grizzly Adams smile. Masry gets a fancy new office building and Erin gets a check for two million bucks and a promotion.
And all thanks to a push-up bra.
This is an interesting film. It’s part woman power like 9 to 5. It’s part John Grisham novel. It’s like watching Nancy Drew operate, if Nancy swore like a sailor, spoke fluent skank, and traded in Bess and George for a nice rack.
I have to admit, Julia’s pretty darn cute in this picture, even with the potty mouth. If you have major problems with profanity, stay away from this film, as well as anything Quentin Tarantino has ever touched or even been in the same room with. If you can handle it without flinching, you need to see this one.
FINAL GRADE: A
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Day Three: Erin Brockovich
Labels:
Albert Finney,
Erin Brockovich,
hollywood,
Julia Roberts,
ratings,
reviews
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"What makes you think you can walk in there and take whatever you want"
ReplyDelete"There called boobs Ed"
Truer words have never been spoken unless by Jesus.
Hahaha. You are right, my friend.
ReplyDelete