Isn`t She Great? Review

Jaqueline Susann - played by Bette Midler - is a woman who more than anything else wanted to be famous. She was a small-time actress with an abrasive personality who somehow managed to inspire devotion in publicist Irving Mansfield (Nathan Lane). The two married after Susann confers with God who lives in a tree in Central Park. Tragedy happens after Susann becomes pregnant, their son is autistic and Susann`s grief at having to hand her son over to an institution is crippling. It`s only when Mansfield suggests she write about the world she knows - aging stars, hopeful hookers and people popping pills - that she emerges from her depression..This is a rather grotesque account of a pushy woman`s rise to fame, not helped by Midler`s stridently coy performance. The film was based on an article by Michael Korda who was actually Susann`s editor, he`s been turned into the rather cliched Michael Hastings, a repressed literary snob, played by David Hyde Pierce. Director Andrew Bergman and screenwriter Paul Rudnick aka Libby Gellman Waxner seem to want Susann to be nice, palatable to audiences and make Mansfield the perfect adoring husband. Neither ring true.