Erin Brockovich will finally deliver the cachet that sex, lies & videotape promised -- making a two-hour-plus biopic starring Julia Roberts as a crusading attorney's assistant is a good working definition of "going Hollywood," and this yarn balances some semblance of social significance with sharp, breezy comedy. Soderbergh's vaunted stylishness has been muted this time around, but he sure knows how to work with actors.

Bringing up the lead is Julia Roberts as the title character, a twice-divorced mother of three with a few dollars in her bank account and a long string of bad luck. Through a sequence of events related with aplomb in the film's opening reel, Erin worms her way into the employ of journeyman attorney Ed Masry (Albert Finney, who's very easy to watch). Investigating a case that has medical records occupying the same file with real estate documents, she stumbles across a far-reaching cover-up — utility giant Pacific Gas & Electric has been quietly offering to buy property from residents of sleepy Hinkley, California, in a belated attempt to make right after letting a nasty form of chromium seep into the local groundwater over the course of many years.

Erin's investigation turns into a consuming mission, and poor Ed has to decide whether to put up the resources required to pursue a direct-action lawsuit. Meanwhile, Erin is getting involved, reluctantly, with amiable George (Aaron Eckhart), her new biker neighbor, who happens to have the time and inclination to look after her kids while she's off at work. Before long, Erin has ditched the stereotype of the poor unwed mother for a new identity as a savvy one-woman task force.

That's the trouble -- Julia Roberts is a little too smart for this role. And I don't mean street smarts or common-sense smarts, which Erin is meant to have in abundance. No, Roberts has Hollywood smarts, and it shows in her smile, the tilt of her head, and the cadence of her speech. The film compensates by giving her some appropriately salty dialogue and an aggressively haute-kitsch wardrobe. (I'll just say that Roberts has an absolutely darling mole on a certain part of her anatomy that I had never really seen before and leave it at that.) Even so, she's clearly Not Like You And Me, which makes her preternatural gumption less satisfying, in context, than it might otherwise have been.

Now, I'm not brain-dead enough to think Roberts isn't the big draw here, nor will I deny her tremendous appeal. To my eyes, in fact, her performances are getting better and better (see also Notting Hill) -- this coming from someone who was a confirmed Roberts-hater not so many years ago (see also My Best Friend's Wedding). It's her confident but largely guileless presence that gives Erin Brockovich the juice that mostly eluded A Civil Action, a gripping, maddening book turned into a limp film. (Her performance is so strong that I'm surprised Universal didn't hold it for release during Oscar season 2000 - I suppose there's always the video to keep it fresh in voters' minds.)

Structurally, Erin Brockovich is pure Hollywood formula. Established as the underdog from the get-go, our girl Erin obviously has a little more than 120 minutes to prove herself so that we can all go home happy. Because too many scenes have a rote movie-of-the-week quality, with nothing really at stake, the film sometimes feels obligatory and uninspired. (Is there ever any doubt that Erin will win over the coldest residents of Hinkley? That she'll get those signatures she needs to go to arbitration? That her children will remain adorable throughout?)

Relief typically comes in the form of another high-velocity Brockovich wisecrack — it's smart dialogue and the shrewd decision to film this story as a comedy (plus a canny gender awareness that bubbles beneath the surface of every scene) that make Erin Brockovich work as well as it does. The screenplay is credited exclusively to Susannah Grant, who also worked on Ever After and Pocahontas, but the dialogue reminds me of Richard LaGravenese (Living Out Loud, The Fisher King), the writer/director whose name was on early credit listings for the film but has since been excised.

Soderbergh shoots all this with a careful conservatism, as though still stinging from the box-office drubbing accorded his jazzy Out of Sight. For instance, his signature jump-cuts are confined to the film's first sequence, and not once does he mess with the narrative chronology. He does, however, coax out some outstanding performances. Finney and Eckhart are fine, but the picture really belongs to Roberts — exuding a high-powered optimism and sashaying through every scene with her breasts in your face, her mouth moving very quickly, and her eyes darting around knowingly, Roberts today comes as close as any superstar I know to earning the ridiculous paycheck she commands.