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Erin Brockovich (film)
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Erin Brockovich is a 2000 docudrama film which dramatizes the story of Erin Brockovich's first fight against the American West Coast energy giant Pacific Gas and Electric Company known as PG&E. The film was directed by Steven Soderbergh and featured actress Julia Roberts in the lead role for which she subsequently won the Academy Award for Best Actress. It is based on a true story and the real Erin Brockovich has a cameo appearance as a waitress named Julia. The original music score was composed by Thomas Newman.
The film was produced and distributed in North America by Universal Pictures, and was distributed overseas by Columbia Pictures.
lass="link1" onMouseover='showByLink("m3221508",this)' onMouseout='hide("m3221508")'href="http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Erin_Brockovich">Erin Brockovich (Julia Roberts) is an unemployed single mother of three children who, after losing a personal injury lawsuit against a doctor in a car accident she was in, asks her lawyer, Edward L.
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Erin Brockovich is a 2000 docudrama film which dramatizes the story of Erin Brockovich's first fight against the American West Coast energy giant Pacific Gas and Electric Company known as PG&E. The film was directed by Steven Soderbergh and featured actress Julia Roberts in the lead role for which she subsequently won the Academy Award for Best Actress. It is based on a true story and the real Erin Brockovich has a cameo appearance as a waitress named Julia. The original music score was composed by Thomas Newman.
The film was produced and distributed in North America by Universal Pictures, and was distributed overseas by Columbia Pictures.
Plot
Erin Brockovich (Julia Roberts) is an unemployed single mother of three children who, after losing a personal injury lawsuit against a doctor in a car accident she was in, asks her lawyer, Edward L. Masry (Albert Finney), if he can find her a job in compensation for the loss. Ed gives her work as a file clerk in his office, and she runs across some files on a pro bono case involving real-estate and medical records against PG&E.
Erin begins digging into the particulars of the case, convinced that the facts simply do not add up, and persuades Ed to allow her further research. After investigation, she discovers a systematic cover-up of the industrial poisoning (Hexavalent chromium) of the town of Hinkley's water supply that threatens the health of an entire community. She finds that PG&E is responsible for the extensive illnesses residents of Hinkley have been diagnosed with and fights to bring the company to justice.
Cast
Reaction
Box office
Erin Brockovich was released on March 17, 2000 in 2,848 theaters and grossed $28.1 million on its opening weekend. It went on to make $125.6 million in North America and $130.7 million in the rest of the world for a worldwide total of $256.3 million.
Reviews
The majority of critics responded favorably towards the film. It holds a certified "Fresh" rating of 83% on film review website Rotten Tomatoes and 73 metascore on Metacritic. Newsweek's David Ansen began his review with "Julia Roberts is flat-out terrific in Erin Brockovich." Even John Simon conceded "yes, she can act." However, film critic Roger Ebert gave the film a two-star review, wrote, "There is obviously a story here, but Erin Brockovich doesn't make it compelling. The film lacks focus and energy, the character development is facile and thin". In his review for the New York Times, A.O. Scott wrote, "After proving, for about 40 minutes, what a marvelous actress she can be, Ms. Roberts spends the next 90 content to be a movie star. As the movie drags on, her performance swells to bursting with moral vanity and phony populism". Peter Travers, in his review for Rolling Stone, wrote, "Roberts shows the emotional toll on Erin as she tries to stay responsible to her children and to a job that has provided her with a first taste of self-esteem". In his review for Entertainment Weekly, Owen Gleiberman gave the film a "B+" rating and wrote, "it's a delight to watch Roberts, with her flirtatious sparkle and undertow of melancholy, ricochet off Finney's wonderfully jaded, dry-as-beef-jerky performance as the beleaguered career attorney who knows too much about the loopholes of his profession to have much faith left in it".
Accuracy
While the general facts of the story are accurate, there are some minor discrepancies between actual events and the movie, as well as a number of controversial and disputed issues more fundamental to the case. In the film, Erin Brockovich appears to deliberately use her cleavage to seduce the water board attendant to allow her to access the documents. Brockovich-Ellis has acknowledged that her cleavage may have had an influence, but denies consciously trying to influence individuals in this way. In the film, Ed Masry represents Erin Brockovich in the car crash case. In reality, it was Jim Vititoe. Brockovich had never been Miss Wichita. She had been Miss Pacific Coast. According to Brockovich, this detail was deliberately changed by Soderbergh as he thought it was "cute" to have her be beauty queen of the region from which she came. One of the plaintiffs, Carol Smith, accused the movie of being "mostly lies".
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