March 26, 2001 -- "Heartbreakers" is a tale of two small-time swindlers and their adventures on the way toward their goal of wealth.

Sigourney Weaver of "Galaxy Quest" stars as Max, and Jennifer Love Hewitt of "I Know What You Did Last Summer" stars as Page. They use their considerable charms to attract rich bachelors and then tempt them to cheat, so they can clean up in the divorce settlement. There are various other con jobs, such as the old slip and fall routine and putting glass in a plate of restaurant food to get out of paying for it. None of these con jobs are as elaborate, or as believable, as those depicted in films like "The Flim Flam Man," "The Sting," or "The Spanish Prisoner." While the details certainly don't bear close inspection, the story is effective as a broad comedy.

Unlike some films about various get-rich-quick schemes, this story does indicate there is a price to be paid for being a con artist. When the grifters get stung by another con artist, there is a certain nice symmetry to it. The story isn't really moralistic, however, far from it. Just as the con games don't bear close inspection, neither do the romances. From a humanistic standpoint, it is very thin.

Max and Page get fouled up in a con on the ultra-rich tobacco baron William B. Tensy (Gene Hackman of "The Replacements"), while Page is also working on another con involving a bar owner, Jack (Jason Lee of "Almost Famous"). Page, being young, is having trouble seducing a nice guy without falling in love with him. It isn't hard to predict how this film is going to come out once it gets going, but it is a pleasant enough journey. Weaver and Hewitt are excellent in their starring roles. Ray Liotta of "Hannibal" is good playing a comic mob dude and Hackman is hilarious as the hacking cigarette man. Anne Bancroft of "Keeping the Faith" is good as another con artist.

Director David Mirkin of "Romy and Michele's High School Reunion) does a good job of maintaining the comic timing of the film. The script by Robert Dunn and Paul Guay throws in enough comic wrinkles to give some needed complexity to the plot. The motivation of the characters is believable for the most part, although Liotta's character does go through some major contortions during the course of the story. The story is funnier than most movie comedies these days. On a side note, there's a nice scene involving amateur astronomy, however the image of the crab nebula in the telescope (about a four inch refractor) is more like a color-corrected composite image from the Hubble Space Telescope. They aren't realistic images, but they are very nice. This film rates a B.

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