Rumor Has It would be a good airplane movie. If you were in a middle seat on a long flight with lousy airplane noise, watching this on a little screen with terrible color fidelity, and there was a fat guy snoring next to you, it wouldn't be bad time filler at all.
On the other hand, if you had paid $8.50 to see this on the big screen in a theater during its first run, I can understand how you would hate it as much as the critics did.
The home environment being somewhere between those two extremes, I end up falling between them in my enjoyment and recommendation level as well. It's not really good enough to recommend, but it's not bad enough to write a scathingly funny and vicious attack piece.
The best I can suggest is to watch the trailer for the film. (Newbies, "trailer" is the term for a coming attractions ad made up of edited together snippets from the film.) The trailer for Rumor Has It pretty faithfully tells the entire movie in 90 seconds, including ALL of the good gag lines. You can save yourself a time investment of some 112 minutes and 30 seconds and not miss much. It's a masterpiece of editing.
For those of you still reading instead of watching the trailer, the plot (there are no surprises to spoil) starts with Jennifer Aniston fairly closely reprising her Rachel character from the first season of Friends. She is insecure, unsure about her recent engagement, and terrified of having to face her family because she doesn't feel she fits in. In short order (again, telegraphed before the opening credits, so I'm not ruining anything for you), she finds out that the book and later film adaptation of The Graduate seem to have been based on actual events in her family. She sets out to find the real life version of Benjamin Braddock and find out if he is her biological father. Romantic complications (which aren't very complex) ensue and there is a warm-hearted moral at the end, as there must be in this kind of fluff piece.
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