WHEN STARS BECOME POPULAR and look forward to long and prosperous careers, producers do their best to figure out how to sustain their appeal to viewers.
One of the best ways to avoid boring the audience, even after stars have already shown much of what they can do, is to pair them off with similarly popular talents on the distaff side.
Thus, to cite just one example, Paul Newman romanced on the movie screen top female star like Eva Marie Saint, Elizabeth Taylor, Joanne Woodward, Geraldine Page and Sophia Loren.
Conversely, Elizabeth Taylor made movies with Richard Burton, Montgomery Clift, Rock Hudson and Robert Taylor.
In Warren Beatty?s case, the sequential stellar pairing acquired a more personal coloration, since he was known for having affairs with quite a number of his leading ladies. They included Diane Keaton, Joan Collins, Natalie Wood, Leslie Caron, Julie Christie, Jane Seymour, Kate Jackson and Faye Dunaway?!
Reunited
What about Tom Cruise? He?s romanced quite a lot of lovely movie stars in the course of his career, and is currently reunited with Cameron Diaz, who first acted with him early in her screen career, in ?Vanilla Sky.?
This time around, they?re costarring in the rom-com and spy thriller, ?Knight and Day,? and it?s instructive to see them in action, because their tandem typifies what?s going on in the biz these days.
For one thing, Cruise is older than Diaz by 10 years (he?s 47), so their pairing is calculated in part to ?youthen? his screen image. Thankfully, Cruise has kept himself physically fit, so his being paired with a noticeably younger star doesn?t come off as embarrassing and TH.
?Except in one scene, where he strips down to swimming trunks, and reveals a body that?s not as trim as it?s supposed to be for an actioner like this.
Luckily for Cruise, however, Diaz herself is no longer a spring chicken, so when she strips down to a wee bikini and reveals her own now less-than-ideal body, she effectively distracts from his imperfections. ?You think he was the one who insisted that she join him in the daring and baring scene?
Well, at least Cruise hasn?t (yet) opted to costar with new actresses young enough to be his daughters (like Miley Cyrus!)?or granddaughters, as some Pinoy action superstars used to do!
Diverting
What about ?Knight and Day? as a film? It?s diverting in its own way, despite the fact that its stellar feats of derring-do are well nigh impossible flights of fantasticating cinematic fancy.
Its plot is similarly implausible, about a top secret agent (Cruise) having to contend with all sorts of rogue agents as he protects the young inventor of a top-secret source of endless energy that many nasty government heads covet.
But, never mind the so-called plot. What keeps this movie thumping is the seemingly endless series of chases, close shaves and last-nanosecond escapes that Cruise and his nonplussed, ?accidental? sidekick and leading lady are able to manage.
Yes, they?re highly improbable, implausible and sometimes downright impossible?but, the diversionary tactics do succeed in diverting us from the fact that this cinematic confection is all icing, no cake.
