Reese Witherspoon is one of Hollywood’s highest-paid actresses, with dozens of films under her belt and a career box office gross of more than a billion dollars. We chose to dedicate this week’s Total Recall to an appreciative look back at some of Reese’s best-reviewed films in honor of her comeback to the big screen, as well as a fantastic 2014 that includes her Oscar-nominated performance in Wild and a modest supporting role in Inherent Vice.
–Legally Blonde
Although romantic comedies are often derided by critics, they are an undeniable rite of passage for twenty something actresses in Hollywood, and Witherspoon managed to reap the benefits of the genre such as the pay raise that comes with starring in a $141 million smash hit while avoiding its worst pitfalls with 2001’s Legally Blonde. While Legally Blonde isn’t original, and its storyline relies on a slew of ridiculous plot twists, it’s never less than charming, owing to a captivating performance from its great lead actress. “As an actor of distinction who is all of 25, Reese Witherspoon exposes fascinating dark origins even as she portrays beautiful girls,” says Entertainment Weekly’s Lisa Schwarzbaum.
–Monsters Vs Aliens
Reese Witherspoon stands a hair under five feet, two inches tall in real life, which may explain why the idea of playing a freakishly tall woman nicknamed “Ginormica” appealed to her — or perhaps it was just the chance to land one of that lucrative voice acting gigs that all the major celebrities seem to be getting these days. In any case, Witherspoon’s lone picture in 2009, Monsters vs. Aliens, was a $381 million 3D smash for DreamWorks Animation. Witherspoon, along with the voices of Seth Rogen, Kiefer Sutherland, Steven Colbert, Rain Wilson, Will Arnett, and others, helped wreak family-friendly cartoon havoc — and earned praise from critics like Amy Biancolli of the Houston Chronicle, who wrote, “True, the story doesn’t amount to much, but the voice work is fantastic.”
–Freeway
Reese Witherspoon had already completed a few films by the mid-’90s, but it was her performance in 1996’s Freeway that made critics sit up and take attention. She effectively utilized her smoldering performance as a challenge, daring viewers to turn away from her smoldering portrayal as a juvenile delinquent whose journey to her grandmother’s house is thwarted by a wolfish sexual predator (Kiefer Sutherland).
–Walk The Line
For her sensitive portrayal of June Carter Cash in this Johnny Cash biopic, Witherspoon joined the ranks of Oscar-winning leading ladies. The film follows the early years of the Man in Black (played by Joaquin Phoenix), including the start of his career and the romance that would last for more than four decades. Walk the Line, one of the year’s biggest hits and a five-time Academy Award nominee, wasn’t without its Hollywood formula concessions — or its detractors, including Cash’s daughter Rosanne — but most critics, including Andrew Sarris of the New York Observer, praised the film, writing, “I advise you catch up with Walk the Line, if only for Ms. Witherspoon’s transcendent joyousness as a still-growing legend.”
–The Good Lie
The Good Lie used a little well-intentioned deceit in its marketing materials, putting Witherspoon’s visage front and centre on the poster to promote this fact-based drama about the American lives of Sudanese immigrants long known as “lost boys.” Despite the fact that her character — a Kansas City settlement worker tasked with the life-changing task of assisting her charges in adjusting to their new surroundings — isn’t truly central to the plot, her performance is a solid anchor in a film whose ingredients range from Hollywood gloss to real-life horror.