Erin Brockovich

America's sweetheart is fine in the role but it's hard to stomach the blatant sophistry on display. Perhaps the filmmakers' hearts were in the right place, but it's more likely that they left out facts in order to serve their "true" story narrative, as Hollywood is wont to do. Worst of all, this film gave the titular character in the real-life tragedy a larger soapbox, thus increasing her speaking fees and the proliferation of phony environmentalism. I'm eagerly anticipating the sequel that shows the continued suffering of the folks she "helped," and the lawyers whom reaped the majority of the benefits of this case.

I saw this film many moons ago, and like the truly david versus goliath tale it is, shocked and awed me. If you actually look at who the real Erin Brockovich is you quickly see that the towns people were the Davids and Erin, her firm, and the arbitrators they put in place are the goliaths. While it is nice to try and believe that someone would do something so good for people who had truly been wronged Brockovich in real life is a lady of the night when it comes to speaking. She will fight for any cause, and for anyone, as long as they pay her speaking fee of at least five figures. Julia Roberts won an academy award for her portrayal, and hell she was good in the movie, you have to be good to make such a bad person seem so good. Erin recently came to Oakville, Ontario, Canada to fight a proposed power plant. Oakville is one of the richest, if not THE richest city in all of Canada and they definitely paid her speaking fee. The power plant was moved and all in that community championed her greatness as a speaker and a fighter for the common people. Will she show up to fight for the smaller, poorer communities that power plant is going to end up now? I doubt they can afford her fee.

When a true story is told well, you leave the movie feeling that you have grown a little either in knowledge or empathy. This does both. Roberts is spot on in her acting as always.