A-List: Top Five Julia Roberts Movies
By J. Don Birnam
May 12, 2016
BoxOfficeProphets.com
I have to say, I really struggled with this one, so I’d love to hear your digressions from my own picks, as usual, on Twitter or Instagram. The problem is simple: I’m a big fan and honestly dislike few of her movies. Still, I can objectively recognize that, of late, Roberts has not had a great run. The remake of the Argentine Oscar winner, The Secret in Their Eyes, for example, was plain bad. Roberts tried her best and has tried successfully to be taken more seriously as an actress (witness her solid, disturbing performance in August: Osage County), but the modifications to the script gave her nothing to work with.
But arguably it’s some of her romantic comedies that have been the true duds, including the stiflingly bad adaption of Eat, Pray, Love, the little-disguised quasi-sequel Runaway Bride, and the childish and pointless Mirror Mirror. Indeed, I’d argue that Roberts’ ventures into more serious movies are some of her best work, or at least some of her most above-average work, perhaps because we have come to expect more fluffy stuff from the actress. Who cannot say, for example, that they were enthralled by her in The Pelican Brief, or that she wasn’t sufficiently stoic in Conspiracy Theory? Pure, unadulterated, kitschy action movies. Not to mention the sinister Sleeping with the Enemy, a somewhat lithe version of Fatal Attraction, though no less memorable in its closing, vengeful scene.
Speaking of which, my sixth place on the list is without a doubt her magnificent appearance in Ocean’s Eleven, where she dazzles with her beauty and cynicism. It’s not that she’s not as good as an actress as in some of the five movies I’m about to list; it’s simply that there are so many actors in that cast of characters that it’s hard not to get somewhat overshadowed. And, indeed, she plays a much smaller role than she normally does. Still, Ocean’s Eleven proves that she can roll with the big boys, and that her talents should not be discounted as if she were another romantic comedy actress.
5. Pretty Woman (1990)
But let’s face it, Roberts is first and foremost a romantic comedy actress. And, the film that put her squarely on the map as America’s Sweetheart, the one about the prostitute with the heart of gold, is undoubtedly one of her finest.
It’s hard to explain why this is such a good movie other than perhaps Julia’s killer smile, so you probably just have to see it. Undoubtedly, however, you’re familiar with the story of Vivian Ward, who meets a lost and confused Richard Gere by accident while working in Los Angeles’ red-light district. The movie is then painstakingly choreographed to a T from that moment on - he’s not really seeking to hire a prostitute, and she’s not a drug user or really even a “slut.” She has a no kissing rule, but breaks it soon and falls in love with him, but not after being offended both by him and his friends about her profession.
All clichés lead to Rome in this one: from the opening scenes, it’s obvious that the two are to fall in love and wed, a reinventing of old movies from Klute to Butterfield 8, all of which featured prostitutes with hearts of gold, played by legendary actresses. And yet Julia, perhaps with her smile of gold, or with her wit of gold, plays it all off as if the movie were something original. In other words, the brilliance of Roberts in this film is that she elevates the movie into something it most assuredly had no business being but now is - one of the classic rom-coms of all time.
4. Mona Lisa Smile (2003)
Of the list today, this one is my guilty little pleasure - perhaps because I was physically present at my college library, where several key scenes were shot. While most rational people would probably list her turn as the charming ingénue in her movie debut, Mystic Pizza, I have a soft spot for her somewhat muted but emotionally deep performance as the feminist college professor, Katherine Ann Watson, in the 1950s in Mona Lisa Smile.
Like Pretty Woman, Mona Lisa Smile does not mince its lack of originality - like Dead Poet’s Society or even The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie before it, the movie focuses on the life-lasting effect that a devoted if controversial professor can have on a student’s life. Teaching art history at an all girl’s college, Katherine and her modern views about the professional choices that women should consider cause controversy and angst. But, the influence she wields is no less important.
In the end, however, Mona Lisa Smile has a redeeming quality that even those other movies about professors don’t have, and that, again, could only be accomplished through Julia’s killer smile. The biggest lesson, you see, is what Katherine herself learns: that while she may think that the path forward for women, the path towards happiness, is to rebel against societal pressures, the real path towards happiness is simply by choosing the life one wants, regardless of where or how that fits into those norms.
Roberts also shines as she leads a young cast that includes Julia Stiles and Kirsten Dunst, and delivers one of her most different roles to date - a serious yet undoubtedly comedic or lighthearted female driven drama unlike any other stars of her caliber can deliver.
3. Steel Magnolias (1989)
In the more traditional vein, we have one of Julia’s first movies, the one that immediately preceded her biggest role ever in Pretty Woman. While it is true that I kept Ocean’s Eleven off the list because the cast was so plentiful as to opaque here, the cast in Steel Magnolias, as grand and as talented as it is, somehow leaves room for Julia to magically shine (so much so that she landed a Golden Globe for her turn).
Undoubtedly you know that in this dramedy she plays Shelby Eatenton, a southern belle stricken by diabetes and fated for a dark end. You know, too, that screen greats from Sally Field to Olivia Dukakis and Shirley MacLaine make this one of the most iconic female dramas of all time. But the truly surprising element of the movie is the relative newcomer, who plays the doomed Shelby with the great big heart that would come to characterize her as a star and as a character.
Shelby (spoilers) succumbs to her illness after delivering a child, causing sadness and grief that is worthy of any moment from the obviously similar Terms of Endearment (proving, once more, that Roberts’ films are all but original). Before that happens, however, Roberts nails the southern accent, and provides hope to the older generation. She would do that to the younger as time went on as well.
2. Erin Brockovich (2000)
Roberts famously landed the Oscar she so-coveted for playing the title character in Steven Sodebergh’s other big movie in 2000, Erin Brockovich.
One of the few times that Roberts has played a real life character, she conducted herself with aplomb and grit in bringing to the screen a larger-than-life personality that was not easy to nail. But nail it she did. A deft mix between funny and serious, Roberts provides the best deadpans and sarcasms of her career as she portrays the fiery assistant turned litigator who helps a group of people mired in tragedy over a local plants pollution of their lands.
What starts as a mostly tongue-in-cheek role soon turns deadly serious, and Roberts perfectly navigates the emotional ups and downs of both her own struggles and those of the people she’s become so devoted to represent. Sure, the plotline is somewhat predictable in its climaxes and anti-climaxes, but any key, non-predictable scene belongs to Roberts and her unpredictable character, whom she ends up embodying wholly.
In the end, of the many Roberts movies one can look through, this one is arguably also the most original (unless one counts John Travolta’s A Civil Action I guess - never mind). And, her Oscar speech was one of the most endearing and heartfelt in a while, back then.
1. My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997)
But if we have been speaking of clichéd movies all day long, we may as well close it out with a big bang.
After a relative down period following the astronomical success of Pretty Woman, Roberts found herself squarely back as phenomenon in the spotlight with the wildly successful My Best Friend’s Wedding.
The movie is somewhat funny and dated today, living right at the cusp of that time when gay characters began to appear more regularly in movies, and right at the cusp of Roberts’ transition to pretty young thing to respected young woman. The story, of course, focuses on Julianne Potter, who has a lifelong male best friend (from the beginning, the movie is high on realism, right?), who she know begrudges to hear is going to marry a ditsy young girl, Kimmy (the memorably whiny Cameron Diaz).
At first in denial, Julianne realizes she’s been secretly in love with her best friend Michael (Dermot Mulroney), and hatches a contrived plot with her stereotyped gay friend (Rupert Everett) to get him back. Hilarity does ensue, including an amazing chase scene sparked by Kimmy discovering Julianne and Michael in an embrace, as well as many skits that may have influenced and inspired Bride Wars. Then, feelings are predictably broken and mended, with Julia delivering one of the most memorable lines of her career: “I’m just a girl…standing in front of a boy…asking him to love her.” (NB: I know, of course, that the memorable line is really from Notting Hill, but no one would blame you for collapsing the two scenes, delivered in nearby years, of Julia asking a boy to love her, even though in My Best Friend’s Wedding she did it under the wedding gazebo).
It’s not every day that an uber successful actress makes the audience feel genuinely sad for her (certainly the contrived offense scenes in Pretty Woman don’t do the trick even if Shelby’s death in Magnolias does), but Roberts portrays the begging under the gazebo scene with such genuine and, if you allow me, pathetic emotion, that you’re squarely on her side despite the fact that she’s clearly an unabashed homewrecker in the movie.
In the end, of course, Julianne does not get the boy—the right outcome, and the one that allows me to finally say with conviction that, at the very least, this is one of Julia’s most original movies ever, at least for a rom com.
Julia, then, may not have decades of awe-inspiring acting turns, but she has run the gamut from inspirational, to emotional, to serious and thrilling, while remaining mostly comedic and romantic. Few actresess have, like her, achieved that vaunted position as a true American Sweetheart, the quintessential American movie star.
A Money Monster, if you will.