Con women Max (Sigourney Weaver) and her daughter Page (Jennifer Love Hewitt) specialize in bilking horny men: Max gets men to the altar, Page maneuvers them into compromising positions immediately after the wedding, and the pair walk away with hefty divorce settlements. But Page is itching to go solo, so Max agrees — reluctantly — to set her up on her own. Unfortunately, the IRS has seized all their ill-gotten gains, and wants another $200,000+ on top. Max and Page must pull off one last, big score, so they head for Palm Beach and its doddering millionaires. Max quickly targets tobacco tycoon William Tensy (Gene Hackman), his industry's own best customer, and reinvents herself as a seductive Russian. While she tries to sew up the Tensy deal before he hacks and wheezes himself to death, Page embarks on a secret side project. Sweet-natured beach bum Jack (Jason Lee) owns a ramshackle bar on the beach that's sitting on $3 million worth of prime real estate; Page is sure she can get her hot little hands on the cash. But could she be making the oldest mistake in the scam artist's book — falling in love? Complicating matters, low-level mobster Dean Cumanno (Ray Liotta), their last mark, is hot on Max's trail, partly because he's mad about the money he shelled out after 24 hours of marriage, but mostly because he wants to give their romance another go. Though the movie aspires to bracing meanness, it's both too broad and too timid for any of its betrayals and counter-betrayals to sting — that Max uses religious scruples to keep from actually having sex with her prospective grooms perfectly embodies the movie's desire to be both naughty and nice. While in her earlier movies Jennifer Love Hewitt made an impression by spilling out of her tops, in this one she spills out of her clothes at both ends. This could, if one were feeling charitable, be construed as a broadening of her range. --Maitland McDonagh
