Great Expectations (1998)

In addition to Finn (Ethan Hawke) and Estella (Gwyneth Paltrow), the dancing duo who meet in childhood, that Florida mansion is occupied by a third — and much scarier — party, Estella's aging aunt, played by Anne Bancroft in a performance destined to touch the hearts of drag queens everywhere. Guzzling martinis, singing endless, rueful choruses of "Besame Mucho," Bancroft's Ms. Dinsmoor swoons and poses as if she were the spirit of unrequited love, but mostly she just seems nuts — a gargoyle vamp wearing too much wrinkle-enhancing makeup. With a character like this as its fairy godmother, it's no wonder that Great Expectations floats into the ozone.

Romeo & Juliet, raucous and slipshod as it was, had a couple of glamorous young stars, Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes, attached to the most famous love tragedy of the Western world. Great Expectations hardly lacks for star power, but it scrambles for a more desperate commercial strategy. It offers an abstract "literary" pedigree plus nudity plus a disaffected push-pull romance set in the burgeoning '80s art world. Even if the audience that turned out for Romeo & Juliet is seduced into going to this one, they may not know what to make of a love story that consists of Gwyneth Paltrow gazing moonily at Ethan Hawke, then giving him the cold shoulder, then stripping off her clothes to pose for him, then giving him the cold shoulder again, then...you get the idea.

That posing scene is the movie's centerpiece. It's supposed to be trendy and alluringly hot/cool, but the song it's cut to, Pulp's "Like a Friend," sounds very '96 to me, and Paltrow's I'm-just-a-girl tease dance is like something out of a designer- perfume commercial. Curling her thin, aristocratic lips with voluptuous playfulness, Paltrow has such natural ebullience that even when she portrays a cold, neurotic (and nonsensical) character like this one, she can still engage you. Hawke, on the other hand, would do well to avoid getting cast as any more tormented bohemian saints. He's a gifted actor, but too much romantic suffering doesn't look good on him; he just seems a pretty boy pining for street cred. Great Expectations could actually have used a bit of street cred. It's one of those bogus Manhattan morality plays in which an art opening has to be filled with fey snobs flaring their nostrils in disgust, while Finn's Joe Sixpack uncle (Chris Cooper) talks too loudly and knocks over a tray of champagne glasses. Forget love. This movie couldn't pass muster as a lesson in manners. D+