the <NEG> swirling sick feeling </NEG> hit me just a few minutes into " heartbreakers . " ray liotta's character was making out with his secretary when his new wife knocked on the door of his office . while scrambling to collect himself , he frantically shouted to her , " just wait a sex ? er , i mean sec ! " <NEG> i was struck by a wave of revulsion </NEG> , thinking , " geez , didn't lines like that die when 'three's company' was canceled ? " over the next few minutes , as the barely double entendres and lingering cleavage shots grew more numerous , i realized that the mindset behind " heartbreakers " predated " three's company . " suddenly , i had an out-of-body experience as my internal way-back machine swept me to the mid-1960s . all across america , the counter-culture was growing like wildfire , but there was scant evidence of it on tv . while young people were challenging traditional values on the streets , frustrated teenagers like me were stuck at home , sulking while our parents enjoyed the latest bob hope special . women in skimpy bathing suits would prance onscreen while hope made growling noises and leered at their breasts . on another channel , dean martin made wisecracks about " booze and broads " and peter lawford , decked out in love beads and a nehru jacket , purred suggestive one-liners as he ogled the go-go dancers . the adults laughed and laughed . " heartbreakers " reeks of that stagnant mentality , from its lingering shots of jennifer love hewitt's vah-vah-voom breasts to its <NEG> leaden screenplay </NEG> , which paints women as haughty schemers and men as drooling buffoons too sex-obsessed to realize they are being manipulated . in addition to liotta and hewitt , the cast includes sigourney weaver , gene hackman , jason lee , nora dunn and anne bancroft . <NEG> i can't imagine </NEG> what drew performers of their caliber to this project . perhaps they thought it was a parody of the sniggering sex comedies of the '60s . if so , <NEG> they were sadly mistaken </NEG> . the story revolves around a mother-daughter con-team . it opens with the marriage of max ( weaver ) to dean ( liotta ) , a new jersey chop shop operator . having withheld sex until the honeymoon , max pretends to pass out on their wedding night . the next morning , she feigns illness , sending a very horny dean off to the office , where he ends up in the arms of his new secretary . just as the two are about to get overtly physical , max bursts into the room and catches them . the " horrified " bride dissolves the union , garnering a healthy cash settlement along the way . of course , the secretary was really her daughter page ( hewitt ) and the whole thing was a set-up . the women move on , but an irs agent ( bancroft ) catches up with them and demands a huge amount of money to cover unpaid taxes . in desperate need of funds , max and page head for palm beach to replay the scam . their mark this time is william b . tensy ( hackman , in <NEG> hideous make-up </NEG> ) , a decrepit tobacco tycoon obsessed with the joys of smoking . max starts to put the game into action , but page is so repelled by the old man ( and angry with her mom ) that she slips off to enact her own score , targeting jack , a laid back young beach bar owner who is worth a fortune . complications arise when page realizes that good-natured jack is stirring actual emotions in her steely little heart . as if that wasn't enough , dean reappears on the scene with revenge on his mind . the attempt to weld a romance onto a caper comedy served only to remind me of the infinitely superior " a fish called wanda . " i won't bother to compare the two . suffice to say that everything done right in " wanda " <NEG> is done wrong here </NEG> . " heartbreakers " is <NEG> soulless , inept </NEG> and , at 123 minutes , at least a half-hour <NEG> too long </NEG> . sigourney weaver and jennifer love hewitt throw themselves into their parts , but <NEG> have nowhere to go with the metallic characters </NEG> . gene hackman is <NEG> utterly wasted in a one-note , one-joke part </NEG> that has him doing nothing but smoking , coughing and waxing rhapsodic about smoking and sex . poor jason lee is stuck in <NEG> the ingenue role </NEG> and the normally charismatic actor <NEG> comes off as merely bland </NEG> . ray liotta manages to squeeze a tiny bit of humanity and humor into his walking clich ? , but only a bit . <NEG> the low point </NEG> in the film has weaver employing a russian accent bad enough to make boris and natasha wince , while doing half-assed slapstick with a broken off penis from a statue . bear in mind , though , that this is merely the worst segment of a movie <NEG> made up of nothing but low points </NEG> . if you remember bob hope specials with fondness , this might be your cup of tea . as for me , i'm going to watch " a fish called wanda " now and try to forget i ever saw " heartbreakers . "
