Tagline: Based on a true rumor.
A young woman returns home to Pasadena, determined to unravel a family secret before she gets married. She learns “The Graduate” might have been based on her kin, and that her grandmother was the inspiration for Mrs. Robinson. Then she finds herself embroiled in an affair with an older man as history repeats itself.
The film is about a young woman (Jennifer Aniston) who puts her marriage plans on the shelf so she can return home to Pasadena and unravel family secrets. She has discovered that the 1967 film “The Graduate” was probably based on her family, her grandmother (MacLaine) was Mrs. Robinson and she doesn’t know her real father.
Sarah Huttinger (Jennifer Aniston) is in a tailspin. She has agreed to marry her boyfriend, Jeff (Mark Ruffalo), but is terrified of going through with it. Her journalism career has stalled out at the obituary desk of The New York Times.
And now, her sister, Annie (Mena Suvari) is plunging into marriage with her tennis partner and Sarah must return home to Pasadena, California, to attend the wedding… which means spending time with her family. For as long as Sarah can remember, she has been the black sheep of her family, never knowing where she fits in. While she loves her father and sister, she can’t relate to their contented lives of country clubs and tennis matches. And for her, going home is like staring down the gauntlet of the dull, settled-down life she fears is yawning out before her.
The only thing that makes the trip bearable is the company of her acerbic grandmother Katharine (Shirley MacLaine), who lets it slip that Sarah is not the first one in the family to get cold feet – that, in fact, thirty years ago, Sarah’s late mother ran off with a mysterious young man days before her wedding to Sarah’s father.
Curiously, around the same time, there was a rumor about a young woman who ran off with a young man who had been seduced by the woman’s mother, creating a huge scandal in Pasadena. The rumor became a book, and the book became a film. Now, in the midst of her sister’s wedding, Sarah finds herself frantically searching for a copy of 1967 film The Graduate, believing her family may have been the inspiration for the story, with Katharine as the older woman and Sarah’s own mother as the young man’s true love. Which leaves one question: who is the young man?
Believing the long-ago story may hold the key to her true identity, Sarah puts Jeff on a plane to New York and detours to San Francisco to look up her mother’s classmate, Beau Burroughs (Kevin Costner), who is now a famous internet billionaire.
What she finds is definitely not her long-lost father, but someone even she could fall in love with… or at least into bed. This strange encounter with a man who embodies all the adventure and excitement she thought she longed for leads her spiraling back to what she knows best and understands least — her family.
These production notes provided by Warner Bros. Pictures
Rumor Has It…
Starring: Jennifer Aniston, Kevin Costner, Shirley MacLaine, Mark Ruffalo, Mena Suvari, Steve Sandvoss, Jenny Wade
Directed by: Rob Reiner
Screenplay by: Ted Griffin
Release Date: December 25, 2005
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for mature thematic material, sexual content, crude humor and a drug reference.
Studio: Warner Bros. Pictures
Box Office Totals
Domestic: $43,000,262 (48.4%)
Foreign: $45,933,300 (51.6%)
Total: $88,933,562 (Worldwide)