Rumor Has It

Rumor Has It (stylized as Rumor Has It... in the U.S. market) is a 2005 American romantic comedy film directed by Rob Reiner, and starring Jennifer Aniston, Kevin Costner, Shirley MacLaine and Mark Ruffalo. The concept of the screenplay by Ted Griffin is that a woman learns that her mother and grandmother may be the inspiration for the 1963 novel The Graduate by Charles Webb. The film received negative reviews from critics and was a box office disappointment, grossing $88.9 million against its $70 million budget. Plot In 1997, Sarah Huttinger, an obituary and wedding announcement writer for The New York Times, returns to her hometown of Pasadena, California, for her younger sister Annie's wedding, accompanied by her fiancé, lawyer Jeff Daly. When Sarah tells her grandmother Katharine Richelieu that she is unsure about getting married, Katharine lets slip that her late daughter, Sarah's mother Jocelyn, ran off to Cabo San Lucas a week before her own wedding. Sarah visits her mother's best friend, Aunt Mitsy, who confirms that Jocelyn spent time with their prep school classmate Beau Burroughs the week before her wedding to Sarah's father Earl, and that Beau was friends with Charles Webb, the author of the novel The Graduate. Jeff points out Sarah's parents were married just short of nine months before her birth, leading her to wonder if Beau might really be her biological father. Sarah also accuses her grandmother of being the inspiration for Mrs. Robinson, the older character who seduced the young man in The Graduate, who later ran away with her daughter.