I've been a fan of Abbie Cornish for a couple years now, since I first saw her in Somersault, and have followed her career closely since then to see if she'd live up to the promise she showed in that film. I saw her last September at the Toronto International Film Festival in Candy, in which she played opposite Heath Ledger as a good middle-class girl turned heroin addict hooking for her next high, and was impressed with both her range of emotion and the chemistry she and Ledger had as the lovers tragically addicted to both heroin and each other.

Checking in with Cornish through IMDb, I was happy to see she has a slew of upcoming projects coming up with some impressive directors and co-stars. Like another of my fave young actresses, Ellen Page, Cornish is making some smart script choices and working with the right people -- plus she's just got the spunk and the talent to rise above the fray. Next up for Cornish is the just-completed The Golden Age, which reunites director Shekhar Kapur and Cate Blanchett, who once again plays Elizabeth I, this time in a storyline exploring her relationship with Sir Walter Raleigh (Clive Owen -- yum!). Cornish takes on the role of Elizabeth Throckmorton, lady-in-waiting to Elizabeth I -- and wife of Sir Walter. Sounds delish.

The commercial I saw for American Dreamz the other night introduces us to the main characters: The President; The Chief of Staff; The Wanna-Be Star; The Boyfriend; The TV Host; The Stage Mother. Unfortunately, those descriptions are about as deep as the character development gets in this tepid comedy from Paul Weitz, the director of About a Boy, In Good Company and American Pie. While no one gets it on with a hot dessert in Weitz's newest film, neither does the comedy ever get more than lukewarm. I suspect this is one of those movie ideas that sounded a whole lot better in the pitch meeting than when it ended up in theaters.  

Part of the problem is that the film doesn't really seem to know what it wants to be when it grows up. We have a wanna-be political satire about a dumb Southern president (gee, wonder who Dennis Quaid is supposed to be lampooning here?) who wakes up the day after his reelection and decides to start thinking. His sedated First Lady is played by Marcia Gay Harden (so obviously Laura Bush she might as well be wearing a "Hello My Name Is ..." tag), and Willem Dafoe, doing his best Dick Cheney impression, is the controlling Chief of Staff.

Then we have the would-be social satire of a reality TV show where wanna-be pop tarts perform for the votes of audience members, and things aren't always what they seem on camera. Weitz works again with Hugh Grant, his star from About A Boy, who plays Martin Tweed, the snarky, British, malcontented host of the show. If you're going to cast anyone in the part of a Simon Cowell-esque TV host, you couldn't do much better than to cast Grant in the part. Likewise, Mandy Moore (playing against type again, as she did in Saved!, by playing a nice girl who's really not-so-nice beneath the surface) is an excellent choice to play Sally Kendoo, who is so desperate to leave behind her "white trash rural Ohio roots" she would probably sacrifice her own mother (Jennifer Coolidge) for success.