Rating: R
Genre:
Comedy
Release Date: 11/10/1998
SubTitles: English/French
Dubbed: English/French
Sound: DD5.1/DDS
Run Time: 106 Minutes
Flags: Violence, Brief Nudity, Not For Children, Profanity, Sexual Situations
Distributor/Studio: Columbia TriStar
The price of fame is murder -- or at least it is in the mind of one woman in New Hampshire.
Suzanne Stone (
Nicole Kidman) has spent most of her life wanting to be famous; she's attractive, speaks well, and imagines herself to be intelligent ("imagines" is the key word here), so she has set her sights on becoming a TV anchorwoman. However, opportunities for female broadcasters are hard to come by in Little Hope, New Hampshire, and she's convinced that her husband, the once handsome but now flabby restaurant manager
Larry Maretto (
Matt Dillon), is just getting in her way.
Suzanne gets herself a spot hosting a weather report on a local public access station, and is preparing a
documentary called "Teens Speak Out," which puts her in touch with a trio of high school students --
Jimmy (
Joaquin Phoenix),
Russell (
Casey Affleck), and
Lydia (
Alison Folland) -- who are even more desperate for attention than she is. When
Suzanne hatches a plot to get
Larry out of her life once and for all, she uses
Jimmy, who has developed a serious crush on her, to do her dirty work, but
Larry's sister
Janice (
Illeana Douglas), who has long believed there was something fishy about
Suzanne, eventually begins to realize what happened to her brother.
Nicole Kidman won a Golden Globe award for her work in this film, which represented something of a comeback for director
Gus Van Sant after the commercial and critical disaster of
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. Screenwriter
Buck Henry plays a small role as a high school teacher.
~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide