Heartbreakers (PG-13, 2001)

Sigourney Weaver plays Max, a con woman who marries wealthy men, denies them sex, and then sues them for divorce when they make a pass at her partner, Page (Jennifer Love Hewitt), who is also her daughter. After they take New Jersey chop shop owner Dean (Ray Liotta), Page is restless and wants to go off on her own. When they run into a little problem with the IRS, they agree to take on one last big con together and head off for Palm Beach. Max wants to go after tobacco man William Tensy (Gene Hackman), but Page is drawn to a sweet bartender named Jack (Jason Lee) who owns some land worth $3 million. Max's challenges include a ferocious guard dog of a housekeeper (Saturday Night Live's Nora Dunn), and Tensy's constant coughing and terrible tobacco-stained teeth. Page's challenge is keeping her plan secret from her mother and keeping herself from falling in love with Jack.

HEARTBREAKERS isn't a terrible movie, but it just does not work very well. We like the characters too much to enjoy their greedy behavior but we do not like them enough to care whether they end up happily. Weaver and Hewitt are at their most delectable in outfits that Erin Brockovich could only dream of. If there were ever an Oscar for cleavage, this movie would be the one to beat. Aside from the cleavage, the best reason to watch the movie is to see Weaver and Hewitt doing their bombshell best and Hackman's odious performance as the mark who just might not be worth marrying to get $20 million.

Max and Page are awful to just about everyone and have no sense that their behavior hurts other people. They are selfish and amoral, operating entirely out of expediency with no thought for the consequences for themselves or others. The script tries to make us believe that this is all because Max is trying to protect Page from being hurt, but that is a con job that we just don't fall for. And despite a few con-job twists, the script is just weak and unoriginal. In real life, these con women would not fool Forrest Gump.