Rumour Has It

Herald rating: ***

Funny, one of the few classic movies that hasn't been revisited is The Graduate. Until now. Yes, this is the sequel. Kind of. It's based so firmly on the original that the 60s stars Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft were approached to consider the lead roles. Bancroft died; Hoffman was committed to other projects.

Jennifer Aniston plays Sarah Huttinger, a journalist whose career has stalled in New York. She returns to Pasadena with her partner, Jeff (Mark Ruffalo). They're going to be married but they've decided to hold the news until her sister, Annie (Mena Suvari), has had her big day.

Soon after she arrives Sarah learns that The Graduate might be based on her family history. Her sarcastic grandmother, Katharine (played with lip-smacking relish by Shirley MacLaine), could be the inspiration for Mrs Robinson.

As Sarah investigates the story against the backdrop of her sister's wedding build-up, she becomes convinced that she might be the result of a romantic rendezvous between her mother, now dead, and the Dustin Hoffman character a week before her parents' wedding.

She tracks down an old classmate of her parents, Beau Burroughs (Kevin Costner), now an internet billionaire in the San Francisco area, to find that he is the Hoffman character, and as she chats to him, Burroughs will have the same effect on Sarah as he apparently had on her mother and grandmother.

Fortunately there is a plot device which will rule out the possibility that she is considering an affair with her own ... oh no, too yucky to even consider.

This is not a great movie, but it has some good laughs. The DVD contains virtually nothing by way of extras.

* DVD, Video rental 10 May