Jane Fonda and Jennifer Lopez in Monster-In-Law

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Making a Buck

To make her comeback -- sorry, return -- to the screen, Jane Fonda had to choose between two projects. The first was Cameron Crowe's Elizabethtown. The other was Robert Luketic's Monster-in-Law. Both parts in both movies were overbearing matriarchs, because that's what women in Hollywood play when they get older. But no matter how bad Elizabethtown turns out, it still would've been the better option. Monster-in-Law is a dismal affair, and it's inconceivable that Fonda chose it. Inconceivable, that is, until you see her performance, which screams, "I recently published my memoirs!"

Fonda plays Viola Fields, a Barbara Walters-type celebrity interviewer, a diva of many connections and marriages, but two loves: her only child and any vodka-based booze. (Sounds like an image one might try to dispel with an autobiography.) Viola makes her grand entrance 20 minutes into the movie. Before then, it appears we've stumbled into a third anniversary screening of Maid in Manhattan by mistake.

There's Jennifer Lopez, playing a scrappy underdog named Charlotte with great skin and a smoking figure. And here comes Michael Vartan as Kevin, jogging shirtless down the California coast, all teeth and cheekbones, with a jaw that could slice a hair down the middle. He's a doctor and she's a temp. She's obviously a middle-classer from New York, as the set designer pounds into our heads by dressing her home with subway memorabilia. Kevin, on the other hand, was raised in the comfort of Italian marble and high thread counts in Beverly Hills. Yet love finds a way.

Perhaps it's because they are both really, really attractive. Or perhaps it's because they must fall in love so we can meet Kevin's mother, Viola Fields, confidante to the Dalai Lama, buddy to Oprah and Jon Voight, a diva of many connections and marriages but only... well, we've covered this already. Long story short (too late): Viola is fiercely protective of Kevin and can't bear the thought of him marrying someone so down-to-earth and colloquial as Charlotte. God forbid everyone be happy. Then we wouldn't have a movie.

So the characters are forced to behave in ways that contradict simple human decency, and Monster-in-Law turns into a series of gags and games (light spoilers approaching). Viola tries to sabotage the engagement by pretending she's in the throes of a nervous breakdown. When Charlotte realizes it's an act, she begins retaliating. It's like Mommie Dearest meets Meet the Parents meets Deliverance. Viola keeps Charlotte up all night with loud fake nightmares, Charlotte spatters Viola's white suit with spaghetti sauce. Charlotte drugs Viola with sleeping pills, Viola takes advantage of Charlotte's food allergies. And so on. The movie is about two chicks trying to make each other miserable, as the dude sits back, his right eyebrow eternally arched to convey that fetching, oblivious GQ attitude. Poor Michael Vartan. Poor us.

J-Lo and J-Fo. Both are self-made, likable, powerful women. Fonda is a great actor who has perfected that rare onscreen quality of iron-willed vulnerability. Lopez is a media tycoon who has built an empire in movies, music, and fashion while holding fast to wholesome charm and dignified sensuality. Both are capable of fine work. You need only look at Fonda's last movie, 1990's Stanley & Iris, to see how at home she can be onscreen. Here, she knows she's intruded on some foul material, and it's fascinating to watch her professionalism clash with her sensibilities.

We've seen it before with her Stanley & Iris co-star Robert De Niro, now slumming in spineless comedies like the Meet the Parents/Fockers. Is that all Hollywood can offer its old guard-campy exercises in witlessness that lampoon an actor's public image? The trend suggests that if Fonda makes another movie, it will be a sequel to this one, and she and Kevin will have to face down Charlotte's demented parents in the projects.

A sequel seems unlikely, though, because Monster-in-Law arrives at Charlotte and Kevin's wedding with nowhere to go. The bride and the mother-in-law have aggravated each other to their wits' ends. A reconciliation is impossible. Then comes the deus ex machina in the arthritic, vulturish form of Elaine Stritch. As soon as the grande dame of Broadway gets out of her town car, announcing herself as Viola's monster-in-law, the movie balloons with confidence. Maybe the filmmakers have the guts to take this mess all the way, to steer the car of inanity right off the cliff of decency. Maybe we'll see Stritch and Fonda wrestle into the wedding cake. At this point, blood mixed with frosting would be a welcome sight.

But no. Stritch wobbles on for a few whiskey-throated one-liners and forces a resolution. It's a vicious cycle, you see. Mother disapproves of son's vulgar fiancée, then the fiancée will grow up to be protective of her son, who will want to marry some tramp from the Bronx, who will then do battle with the protective mother. Lesson conveyed, Stritch shuffles off, perhaps back to New York, where she probably orders a stiff drink and tells her theatre friends about this awful movie she did to make a buck.