So, I'm afraid the news that Reese Witherspoon may end up in Paul Thomas Anderson's Scientology movie makes me less, rather than more, optimistic about the project. Let me preface this by saying I like Witherspoon quite a lot. She's genuinely hilarious in Legally Blonde, which deserves credit as a brilliant satire of dizzy blondes, legal movies, and Harvard, and not simply as a chick flick. She's a coequal part of a simply brilliant cast in The Importance of Being Earnest. And she's heartbreaking in Pleasantville. But I have to confess that I've never found her truly convincing in a heavy drama. Her innocence in Cruel Intentions had relatively little life (Sarah Michelle Gellar had far more to tear into as the bad girl, and Selma Blair was wonderful as the innocent-gone-wild, a role Witherspoon might have had fun with). I thought she was fairly leaden in Vanity Fair, which looked gorgeous but somewhat flat. And Rendition looked just unwatchable. In this project, she'd have to play the much-younger, knocked-up wife of the leader of a Scientology-like organization. It's hard to see a lot of humor or energy in a role like that, but maybe she'll come up with it.