Trama

A mother and daughter con team seduce and scam wealthy men.

Max and Page Conners are a mother-and-daughter con team. Max singles out wealthy men and convinces them to marry her. Once married, Page seduces him, ensuring that Max catches them in the act. Cue divorce proceedings and a large settlement. What could possibly go wrong, except maybe falling in love?—grantss

Max and Page are a mother and daughter con team. Max seduces wealthy men into marrying her, then Page seduces them into infidelity so Max can rake them over the divorce court coals. And then it's on to the next victim.—Greg Bulmash <greg@imdb.com>

Get ready to lose your heart - and your bank account! When it comes to conning millionaires, Maxine Conners and her daughter, Paige, are real pros. First, Maxine leads them to the altar. Then, Paige lures them into seduction... and a hefty divorce settlement! After that, it's on to the next unfortunate victim: repulsive billionaire, William Tensy. Unfortunately, Paige breaks the cardinal rule of the con and falls in love, with a young bartender. Now, Maxine must hold on to her daughter and Tensy's money, before she loses the best partner in crime she will ever have.—Robert Rosado <valentine@love-hurts.org>

Max (Sigourney Weaver) and Page Conners (Jennifer Love Hewitt) are a mother-daughter con artist team. The Conners are settling a con on Dean Cumanno (Ray Liotta), an auto-body shop owner and small-time crook. The con, which the Conners have played a number of times before on other men, involves Max marrying Dean, sexually frustrating him during the wedding dinner while arousing him endlessly (she even dances with the busboy at the wedding to delay starting the honeymoon night), passing out on their wedding night to avoid actually consummating the marriage, and then Page (posing as Dean's secretary) luring Dean into a compromising position at his office to justify Max's immediate divorce and hefty settlement.

The con is a success as the divorce attorney Mr Surpin (Carrie Fisher) gets Max a settlement of $300,000 and she gets to keep the Mercedes that Dean gifted her on their wedding night. Surpin threatens to take Dean to court if he refuses, in which case his entire business (where he steals and resells cars with the body shop as the front) would into scrutiny.

Max is controlling towards Page and tells her everything she can or cannot do during the con or even in her personal life. Page is not allowed to smoke or even eat meat. Max tells Page that they made $80,000 and the Mercedes from the Dean caper, in 4 months of work. Page is frustrated working on the small-time cons and wants to go big. Max and Page wriggle out of paying for anything. They sprinkle glass on their restaurant meals and swipe a victim's credit card at the gas station, by distracting him.

Page declares that she wants to go solo. Max initially relents, but when they visit the bank to split their earnings, they are confronted by an IRS agent Gloria Vogal (Anne Bancroft) who declares that they owe the government a considerable sum ($247,811) on top of the rest of their savings, which have already been seized. Gloria says that Max has not paid her taxes for the last 7 years. Max and Page have 90 days to pay in full, or IRS will move ahead with criminal charges for felony tax evasion and fraud.

Page reluctantly agrees to work together with Max on one last con in Palm Beach (refusing to work anything cheaper as Palm Beach would result in enough money to pay off the I.R.S. and set up Page to work on her own). For their target, they choose widower William B. Tensy (Gene Hackman), a tobacco baron who is addicted to his own product. Tensy is hard to love as he coughs and spits a lot due to his damaged lungs from the smoking. Max argues that picking cute is dangerous, as cute leads to feelings and that clouds the objective. They check into a hotel suite, by Page faking an back injury on a seemingly wet hotel lobby floor. Max coerces the manager to give them a suite till the time Page recovers.

Meanwhile, Dean in unable to let go of Max and decides to pursue her. Complicating matters is beachfront bartender Jack (Jason Lee), whom Page meets without her mother's knowledge while attempting to go after a target she pointed out earlier. A doctor who inherited money from an uncle; Max rejected him on the grounds that he was a "momma's boy" as he still lived with his mother. Page tries to lure the doctor by pretending to choke on a berry, but then she actually chokes. Jack notices this and saves Page with the Heimlich maneuver, but this ruins the play for Page as the doctor leaves with his mother. Page learns that Jack is worth $3 million, having inherited the bar, and decides to target him for a side con. Page starts to act like the damsel in distress and seduces Jack. Page ends up developing genuine feelings for Jack, but Max, who has been hurt many times before, tells her to break it off; Page reluctantly ends the relationship.

Max pursues Tensy at an auction house by outbidding him on a statue, to gain his attention. This goes wrong as Tensy has a coughing fit and Max ends up with the statue for $180,000. She manages to get out of purchasing it when the statue's penis is damaged during transfer. Page then puts spikes on Tensy's return route and punctures his car tires as he drives over it, and Max follows him to rescue. Max takes Tensy to the hospital and proceeds to seduce him.

Tensy proposes to Max ahead of schedule, but before they can get married, he passes out and dies due to his lifetime of smoking while trying to consummate the marriage. While Max and Page are deciding what to do with the body, Dean arrives, having tracked Max down in order to propose to her again. Dean discovers the ruse Max and Page played on him and threatens to expose them. Max offers to return Dean's divorce settlement money if he'll help them make Tensy's death look like an accident. Max reveals to Page that the money wasn't really taken by the IRS, and the agent had in fact been Max's mentor, Barbara, in a ruse to prevent Page from leaving. But when Max, Page and Dean go to the bank, the money really has gone, liquidated in an act of betrayal by Barbara.

In order to help Max, Page decides to accept Jack's offer of marriage, planning to work it as a regular con. Page insists that Jack will not cheat on her, but is heartbroken when during the wedding night she breaks into his room and finds him in a compromising position with Max. After the divorce settlement is paid, Dean confronts Max about the ethics of their con, pointing out that even a "goody-goody" like Jack is only human. Max reveals that Jack actually turned her down and she drugged him to put him in the position where Page found them, defending her decision by claiming that Jack would have gone on to hurt Page eventually. Dean counters that life is about pain, but that it can also be good, and Max has no right to keep Page from living her life just because of what might happen.

Chastened, Max tells Page the truth, admitting that her own efforts to protect her daughter from pain have only hurt her in other ways, recognizing that Page has to make her own life. Page returns to Jack, giving him back the bar he'd had to sell to pay the settlement, and tells him her real name. Max and Dean also get together, Dean having admitted that he still misses Max even after what she put him through. Dean - using the name 'Stanley' - romances Barbara, with Max watching them via binoculars, implying that Max and Dean are now working together to get Max's money back.