Rumor Has It . . .

A young journalist (Jennifer Aniston), going home to Pasadena with her fiance (Mark Ruffalo) to attend her sister’s wedding, discovers that her maternal grandmother (Shirley MacLaine) might have been the inspiration for Mrs. Robinson in Charles Webb’s novel The Graduate. Intrigued, she hunts down the real-life model for Benjamin Braddock, now a suave zillionaire (Kevin Costner), who once made love to her mother and her grandmother and who might also be her father. In some ways this intricate piece of whimsy is closer to the romantic fantasy of Pretty Woman than the conformist satire of Mike Nichols’s The Graduate, but it shares with both these crowd-pleasers a faintly corrupt complacency. Under the circumstances, MacLaine, Costner, and Ruffalo acquit themselves well. Rob Reiner directed a script by Ted Griffin (Matchstick Men). PG-13, 96 min. (JR)

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