Screen couples with no sizzle to sell

Alonso Duralde Film critic

Would that Matthew McConaughey could manage the kind of rapport with his female co-stars that he has with Oprah Winfrey every time he sits on her couch to plug a movie. Oprah gets gushy and giggly and all but blushes and stammers when he comes to talk about driving his pickup truck and making his own skin-care products, but McConaughey rarely seems to register that much of a response from the women who are paid to be enamored of him on screen.

In the dreadful new comedy “Fool’s Gold,” he and Kate Hudson have the same lack of chemistry that plagued the duo in the inexplicably popular “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.” There was no sizzle twixt McConaughey and Sarah Jessica Parker in “Failure to Launch,” and he and Jodie Foster actually seemed to create force fields around one another in “Contact.”

But McConaughey isn’t alone in failing to click with his leading ladies. The history of Hollywood’s on-screen romances is littered with couples who failed to spark, whether because of bad acting, weak material, poor direction, or even just an inability to make an off-screen romance register in front of the cameras. During the interminable “Fool’s Gold,” I jotted down some examples on the back of my Goobers box:

Katie Holmes and Christian Bale, “Batman Begins”
They’re both attractive enough, goodness knows, and they’ve each proven to be capable screen performers. But that indefinable X factor that makes a movie couple believable and sweeps the audience up into their love story was completely missing in this superhero saga. Not that cowl-and-capes movies necessarily lend themselves to great romances, but the stale air between Holmes and Bale made the “Batman” pairing of Michael Keaton and Kim Basinger look like Bogie and Bacall.

Woody Allen and Helen Hunt, “Curse of the Jade Scorpion”
While Woody Allen, even in his prime, was no one’s idea of a heartthrob, he nonetheless made a quirky comic foil and prickly romantic in his films, particularly opposite his real-life paramours Diane Keaton and Mia Farrow. But by 2001, it was getting a little uncomfortable watching a 65-year-old Woody flirting with Charlize Theron and Elizabeth Berkeley in this unfunny screwball comedy. Coming off worst was Helen Hunt, then 37, who was supposed to have a love-hate relationship with Allen’s character but came off instead as someone trying to get her grandpa to eat his soup and go to bed.

Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, “Gigli”
It’s an old saw that actors who don’t get along in real life (e.g., Harrison Ford and Sean Young in “Blade Runner”) create the most fireworks on screen while real-life lovers can rarely translate their passion to celluloid. There are exceptions to this rule, of course — Hepburn and Tracy leap to mind — but “Gigli” isn’t one. Affleck and Lopez’s passion made them a tabloid staple, but exactly zero percent of their affection could be felt in this dreadful mob comedy. (Ironically, the failure of “Gigli” led writer-director Kevin Smith to radically pare down Lopez’s role opposite Affleck in “Jersey Girl,” but the couple play off each other brilliantly in the rarely screened original cut of that film, which Smith plans to one day release on DVD.)

Adam Sandler and Kevin James, “I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry”
Yes, this comedy about straight firemen passing for gay is, at best, a bro-mance, but Sandler and James fail to be even the least bit convincing as they stage their masquerade. The movie leads up to the big scene where they’re expected to kiss each other, but the moment is handled with such obvious disgust and distaste by the actors and filmmakers that it torpedoes any messages the movie has about tolerance and understanding. Compare it to, say, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, who play a dude-on-dude kiss for maximum comic effect in “Baseketball.”

Jon Krasinski and Mandy Moore, “License to Wed”
While these two actors fail to raise a single goosebump as an altar-bound young couple, I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. In other films and TV shows, both Krasinski and Moore have proven themselves to be likable, charismatic performers. And given how wretchedly directed “License to Wed” was, it’s quite possible that any screen chemistry the two might have generated was completely eradicated by the hacks who made the film. We may never know for sure.

Lily Tomlin and John Travolta, “Moment by Moment”
One of the screen’s most notoriously unsuccessful teamings was a temporary career-killer for both stars. She’s a dissatisfied Beverly Hills wife, he’s a street hustler, and together they ... have the same hairdo. While this star-crossed romance is better than its reputation, Tomlin and Travolta aren’t convincing for a second as hot-and-heavy lovers. See it anyway for its thoroughly unintentional hilarity.

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