Soderbergh: Part 9

Intro

Erin Brokovich (2000)

By my count, Steven Soderbergh has made six movies that I would call a box office hit, although it's possible I'm missing a movie or two seeing as he made 30 movies and I'm not fact checking this.  I have now seen all but Magic Mike.  Three of the movies are the Ocean movies, where the intention is to make a fun heist movie and nothing more.  Out of Sight is trying to be a fun crime comedy and while I haven't seen Magic Mike yet, that movie is I assume trying to be a fun stripper movie.

Erin Brokovich, while not exactly unfun, seems to break the mold of a typical Soderbergh box office hit.  He's clearly trying to make good movies that are also fun, but these are movies that don't pretend they are anything more than what they are.  They are fun escapism movies and Soderbergh knows that.

This movie on the other hand, I'm actually surprised this ended up making as much money as it did.  I think aside from the Ocean movies, this is his next most successful movie at the box office.  And it's... fine?

Here's where my expectations have possibly been unfairly set by Soderbergh himself, but I'm now on movie #10 and the previous nine have all felt like Soderbergh trying to make a different type of movie.  With Erin Brokovich, we have the Oscar bait movie.

That's probably unfair, but this reeks of Oscar bait to me.  I do like some Oscar bait movies, and I think if I had no idea Soderbergh directed this, I'd probably like it more, but I kind of thought he wouldn't make one of these movies.

I think I would have liked this movie more if Erin Brokovich wasn't played by Julia Roberts.  I'm not saying her performance is bad, but her showy performance is why this seems like an Oscar bait movie to me.  Get Julia an Oscar!  It worked of course.  But I never felt like I was watching anybody but Julia Roberts trying to win an Oscar.

It doesn't really help that this is a story that's been told before.  Another unfair thing going against this movie from my perspective - before I wrote this, but after I saw the movie, I watched Dark Waters.  They are basically the same story, but Dark Waters is told better and is a better movie.  This is a good reminder that sometimes the context of you watching a movie can really impact what you think of the movie and the context for me watching Erin Brokovich did it no favors.

I would love to get responses to this to tell me I'm being unfair, but this just straight up seem like a movie designed to get Julia Roberts an Oscar and I was always aware of that when watching.  I honestly do wish I liked this more, but this is the first huge disappointment for me, which granted it was one of the few movies I had expectations for too.

2/4 stars