# Erin Brockovich review – Julia Roberts’ glamorous turn as an underdog lawyer

Steven Soderbergh’s true story of a paralegal who takes on corporate villains seems a little old-fashioned 25 years on

  
*Out of the ordinary … Julia Roberts as Erin Brockovich. Photograph: Universal/Allstar*



## Review

Erin Brockovich review – Julia Roberts’ glamorous turn as an underdog lawyer

From our vantage point, there are certain things that look dated. A remake might not allow Erin to yell back at a plus-size legal assistant: “Bite my ass, Krispy Kreme!” The film is also distinctly sunny in way that feels a little sucrose, almost as if there isn’t a problem that can’t be dissolved by Erin’s optimistic Colgate smile or shamed away by her scowl. She is menaced at one stage by an anonymous caller on the phone, but that’s it; the worries and the cares that she has are all about her domestic situation.

It certainly feels very different from, say,  which is exactly that: dark. There is also  about the poisoned water in his hometown of Flint, Michigan. The moment here in which Erin pointedly offers someone a glass of the local water actually put me in mind of the scene in Moore’s film in which Barack Obama somewhat unconvincingly drinks a glass of Flint water as a way of mollifying the crowd.

There is one aspect of Erin Brockovich that still feels current: the awful moment when well-meaning lawyers have to talk to a roomful of angry people, and explain that it might be a good idea to take the bad guys’ increased offer of settlement and not gamble on going to trial and losing everything. There was something rather similar in the recent Mr Bates vs the Post Office. Erin Brockovich is a study in Hollywood optimism, and Roberts sells it hard.

Erin Brockovich is in UK cinemas from 7 March.

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