Battle of the Battle of Heirs Apparent
Kirsten Dunst vs. Julia Stiles vs. Maggie Gyllenhaal

First off, let's get this question out of the way: Of course we need a new Julia Roberts. Hollywood, obviously, can't function without a go-to romantic-comedy queen -- someone whose very presence in a film, spun together with the most gossamer of plots, is enough to guarantee serpentine line-ups on opening weekend and beyond.

Roberts was a mere twenty-three years old when Pretty Woman opened in 1990, and she immediately established herself as America's Sweetheart. So firmly did she establish herself, in fact, that she went on to star in a movie titled America's Sweethearts. And, in the ensuing fourteen years, no one female movie star has risen to challenge her seriously.

Kirsten Dunst is now twenty-one. Julia Stiles is twenty-two. Maggie Gyllenhaal is twenty-six. And all three are, of course, starring this week in Mona Lisa Smile, in which they play the rapt students to Roberts's wise teacher.

Make no mistake: Roberts is still the star, but she's no longer the ingenue. She serves instead as a kind of den mother to this trio of aspirants; at the film's end, you might expect her to touch one of these young actresses's shoulder with her wand (a left-over prop from Hook) and intone, Morpheus-style, that this young starlet is The One.

But which one? All three have risen through the ranks, clawing all the way. Stiles has soundly trounced Erika Christensen, her uncanny lookalike -- who, despite her excellent acting debut in Traffic, has more recently been seen in Swimfan and aiding Ashton Kutcher in a prank on Punk'd. Dunst, for her part, didn't defeat Reese Witherspoon so much as cede to her a certain niche of disposable fluff comedies, which Witherspoon -- her own impressive acting chops notwithstanding -- seems all too happy to dominate. Gyllenhaal is, in every respect, the dark horse: she's the oldest, the brunette-iest, and the least conventionally good-looking. But who knows? A strong showing as the vamp in Smile might yet vault her to Next Roberts status, as opposed to simply Next Sherilyn Fenn status.

It's doubtful that anyone will flock to see Smile for the movie itself: the trailers look uniformly joyless, and the plot seems warmed over from some discarded Dead Poet's Society rewrite, with the boy's private school ties replaced with fetching tweed skirts and those bowl-shaped flapper hats. But the suspense! The Battle Royale! Just as Dead Poets Society would, ultimately, yield up only one future star in Ethan Hawke (sorry, Robert Sean Leonard; our condolences, Josh Charles), so too will there likely be only one victor standing at the end of Smile. Excepting, of course, Julia Roberts, who no doubt took home ten times what her co-stars made in tandem, and didn't have to go to a single elocution class, either.

Advantage: Stiles. She's already called "Julia," after all.