Rumour Has It (2005)

I stumbled across this film on TV a few years ago and have loved it ever since! Jennifer Anniston is one of my favourite actresses and she did not disappoint me in this. Rumour Has It follows the characters that inspired the books and film The Graduate (1967) in which college graduate Benjamin Braddock (a young Dustin Hoffman) is trapped into an affair with Mrs. Robinson and then finds himself falling in love with her daughter, Elaine. Jennifer Anniston’s character Sarah is this ‘Elaine’s’ daughter and when she finds out her family were the real characters behind the famous film she realises that her father is not actually her father but is in fact Beau Burroughs, the real life Benjamin Braddock. This realisation leads her to search for Beau and makes her question her life choices, including her engagement to the lovely Jeff (Mark Ruffolo).

Relationships are very important in this film, particularly between family members. When Sarah learns the truth about her heritage she feeling like she doesn’t know her own family and during the course of the film the close relationships she’d had with her father, sister and grandmother all get called into question. Sarah’s relationship with Jeff also struggles because she is so caught up in how her world has been turned upside down she doesn’t stop to include him. Jeff is at first supportive and lets Sarah so what she has to do but it eventually takes its toll and Sarah is left to decide whether Jeff is what she really wants.

The entire cast of this film is outstanding, with Kevin Costner as the suave Beau Burroughs, Mena Suvari the spoilt younger sister of Sarah and the key that holds this whole film together: Shirley MacLaine, who is outstanding as Sarah’s grandmother and the original ‘Mrs Robinson’, it is in fact her show down scene with Beau that really steals the film for me.