Mona Lisa Smile

Starring: Julia Roberts, Julia Stiles

RS: 1of 4 Stars

2003 Drama

"Irritating" doesn't begin to describe Julia Roberts as Katherine, an art-history prof who arrives at Wellesley in 1953. She's in her prime and eager to teach Stepford girls to be fem-bots. Did she have access to the see-the-future machine that Ben Affleck invented in Paycheck? Smirky Katherine seems to know every step in the women's movement from the last fifty years.

The girls are played by a who's who of young Hollywood womanhood -- Kirsten Dunst, Julia Stiles, Maggie Gyllenhaal -- each given one emotion to play and each forced to stare at Roberts in awe for showing them the way. That Mike Newell (Donnie Brasco, Four Weddings and a Funeral) directed this insulting swill is beyond depressing. Women of the Fifties, rise up in protest.

PETER TRAVERS
(December 23, 2003)