Erin Brockovich is about a woman's rise from ordinary (if not failed) motherhood -- she is poor, has three kids, two bad marriages behind her, no education, and only very short skirts and serious cleavage to her credit -- to become a research assistant for a small law firm. She then takes on and defeats a billion-dollar corporation. Because Julia Roberts has more power than Soderbergh in the Hollywood system, he obviously did little in the way of directing her. As a consequence, her character never does anything except show us versions of Julia Roberts: Julia Roberts with lots of screaming kids, Julia Roberts having sex with a biker, Julia Roberts in the kitchen trying to kill big bugs, Julia Roberts taking on a giant corporation.
None of this makes Erin Brockovich Steven Soderbergh's worst film -- that honor goes to his sophomore effort, Kafka. In fact, because this is a Hollywood film, with the extreme artistic limitations such a picture imposes on a director, we suddenly notice aspects of Soderbergh's filmmaking that are harder to detect when he has substantial control over his material. It is in these areas (editing, directing supporting actors) where his true gifts come through, the main one being that he works extremely well with male actors (he saved George Clooney's Hollywood career by directing him so well in Out of Sight). Here, Aaron Eckhart is great as a biker who seduces Julia Roberts by babysitting her three kids, and Albert Finney pulls off one of his best performances in years as the lawyer who hires Erin Brockovich and then has to put up with her ambition and her Wonderbra. If you remove these two performances (and a few truly cinematic moments), all you have left is a stupid plot and the dentiglorious spectacle that is Julia Roberts.
