Posted by Glenda Glamazon at ac98d46a.ipt.aol.com on March 23, 2001 at 12:44:30:
...for Heartbreakers are uniformly excellent, even if people hated the movie. To wit (from Rotten Tomatoes):
"Jason Lee, one of the best young actors working in Hollywood these days, brings a warm, subtle touch to his role of the lovelorn bar owner head-over-heels in love with Page." –Max Messier, FilmCritic.com
"And Lee, a highlight, uses pinpoint timing and dry wit to steal every scene he's in." –Sean O’Connell, NewYork.citysearch.com
"Mr. Lee uses his knack for understatement to great effect, much as he did in last year's Almost Famous."—Gary Dowell, Dallas Morning News
"Jason Lee, looking as scrubbed here as he did rock god sleazy in Almost Famous, shows up as a laid back beach bar owner who falls in love with Page, unaware that she's trying to bilk him out of the $3 million he's been offered for his property. Lee, as an actor, is a slacker Jekyll and Hyde -- he can play wistful innocents as convincingly as he does raffish jerks..."—Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly
"Lee introduces a note of charming calm into the frenetic comedy."—Kirk Honeycutt, Hollywood Reporter
"And being a fan of Jason Lee personally, it was also nice to see him paying the rent as the "love interest". In fact, I even bought most of the romance stuff between him and Jennifer Love."—JoBlo, JoBlo’s Movie Emporium
"...Hewitt makes Page's professed materialistic desires for designer clothes and jewelry the reactionary shield of someone who is desperate for an emotion that is not bought or coaxed, but earned. Jason Lee's performance draws this out of her; it undoubtedly helps to play off someone as fresh and sincere as he manages to be. The movie makes him into an odd duck of sorts--a male who actually doesn't want to cheat on his beloved--but he plays the sweetness with measures of curiosity and disbelief, preventing Jack from becoming a soppy dish of naiveté."—Chuck Rudolph, Matinee Magazine
"The comedy however comes primarily from the supporting cast. Ray Liotta executes a spot-on Jersey accent in his role of a disreputable body shop owner and Jason Lee has a some sweetly sarcastic lines built within the context of his romantic lead character."—Michael Elliot, Movie Parables
"As Love Hewitt's love interest, Jason Lee (Chasing Amy) manages the difficult feat of being patient, congenial, witty, and wise while receiving no such qualities in return. Again, utter nonsense, but his astronomer-barman affords the story some sense of gravity."—Gregory Weinkauf, New Times Los Angeles
"Aside from Lee, who acts circles around Hewitt and still looks embarrassed, everyone else seems like they've had their brains eaten (especially Liotta, for some reason)."—Jon Popick, Planet SickBoy
"I mean, the minute we meet Jason Lee (who makes a great foil for the newly nasty Jennifer Love), we know she's going to "leave the life" for him."—Rob Blackwelder, Spliced Wire
"...Lee is winning as a friendly smart aleck..."—Chris Hewitt, St. Paul Pioneer Press
The only negatives have more to do with the writing than Lee's performance:
"Jason Lee is likable, but the film's requirement for him to curb his smart-alecky cynicism makes him seem like a second-rate Ben Affleck (with whom he co-starred in Chasing Amy)."—James Berardinelli, ReelViews
"Poor Jason Lee is stuck in the ingenue role and the normally charismatic actor comes off as merely bland."—Edward Johnson-Ott, NUVO Newsweekly
"The weakest link in the movie is Jason Lee's character. Most of his film personas have been either comically irreverent (such as neurotic Gen-X slacker Brodie in Kevin Smith's Mallrats) or unbearably cheesy (such as romantic chump Jay in Kissing a Fool). Unfortunately, Heartbreakers gets an example of the latter. As the nondescript nice guy who Jenny Luv falls for, he starts off with promising sarcasm. But he's quickly decimated into a creampuff, and the scenes about "finding true love" are among the most boring and corny moments in the whole story."—Andrew Manning, Radio Free Entertainment
"Jason Lee (ALMOST FAMOUS), who isn't given much to do as the only guy with whom Page ever falls in love, phones in his performance."—Steve Rhodes, Steve Rhodes Internet Reviews