Reviews

I think you have to be or have been a teacher to feel as though John Hughes' movie "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" is like a student scraping his nails across your blackboard for 90 minutes. When this movie was first released, I happened to see it on a week where a student came tardy to my class, cussed me out when I called him on it, and then had his mother phone and tell me that I was overreacting [for doing what was expected of me] and tell me that she was praying for me. By the time I finished watching the movie, Principal Rooney (ployed by Jeffrey Jones), who was intended as a figure of fun, was a very sympathetic character to me.

Anyway, Matthew Broderick plays the title role, an insufferable youngster who appears to have an angel of God at his side. Ferris concocts elaborate schemes for playing hooky from school, yet he manages to endear himself to everyone except Mr. Rooney, who can never quite catch Ferris in the act, and his sister Jennie (Jennifer Grey of "Dirty Dancing"), who is justifiably annoyed at Ferris's liberties.

One fine spring day, Ferris again fools his parents into thinking he is on Death's doorstep. When they leave for work, Ferris browbeats his downtrodden buddy Cameron (Alan Ruck, later of TV's "Spin City") into stealing his father's prized 1961 Ferrari, hijacking Ferris's girlfriend (Mia Sara) from school and going on a joyride.

The angel-of-God analogy is particularly apt because the movie seems a latter-day version of deus-ex-machina. And never has a movie seemed so stagy. When Ferris starts talking to the camera (presaging similarly self-conscious '90s movies and TV shows), expounding his theories on life and skipping school, one half-expects to read "Based on a play by Neil Simon" in the credits.

What a great combination--the self-righteousness of John Hughes and the Broadway smarminess of Matthew Broderick. Two minds without a single thought.

And the film in constantly at odds with what it tries to tell us. At one point, Ferris tells us that you'll never get anywhere by kissing people's hindquarters. Yet he can't get anywhere without sucking up to people or manipulating them for his selfish whims.

He also complains about his parents being weird. The poor kid--all his parents have ever given him are everything he wants, and more attention than his sister can hope to receive.

And how is all of this massive manipulation possible? Because Hughes sets up cardboard characters and emotions. Mr. Rooney is essentially Wile E. Coyote, forever chasing the Road Runner in vain.

Ferris's parents are vapid dummies who don't care much about anything. And Ferris is supposedly made lovable by such acts as his hammy performance to get out of school (an old bit when it was used in "E.T.") and his lip-syncing to a rock song (which, after Tom Cruise in "Risky Business" and Rodney Dangerfield in "Easy Money," was well on its way to become a modern-day movie cliché).

All of the performances are execrable, except for Ruck as Cameron, the put-upon friend. When Cameron vows to take a stand against his dad, the scene almost works, despite its utter gravity, because Cameron has been such a likable dolt up until then. If only we could see a movie about a teenager like *him*, instead of this self-indulgent vehicle about a self-indulgent brat. When John Hughes--a Mel Brooks for high-school geeks--was asked how he prepares his scripts, he said, "I never start with the jokes. I look at an issue and try to find the story in it...To me, 'Animal House' was a character movie." That's funnier than anything in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off."

Review of SPIDER-MAN 2

by STEVEN BAILEY

There are some "popcorn movies" that transcend their origins and

just become great movies--"North by Northwest," "Raiders of the

Lost Ark."

Add "Spider-Man 2" to the list.

There's no good reason that a film about a guy with the dubious

talent for traveling by web should be one of the most touching

movies around. But darned if I wasn't near tears by movie's end.

For that, kudos to director Sam Raimi, who found the same

"realistic" tone in the first "Spider-Man" and extends it here. The

characters seem like clichés--the clumsy kid turned super-hero,

the erstwhile girlfriend, the doting aunt. But thanks to heartfelt

encore performances from Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, and

Rosemary Harris, they're more believable than those in more

"earthbound" movies I've seen this year.

Of course, some viewers don't go to "Spider-Man" movies for

character depth, and action fans won't be disappointed here either.

Alfred Molina, whom I've always found hammy, here has perfect

pitch as Dr. Octavius--at first friendly and caring to Peter Parker

(Spidey's daily alter-ego), then downright operatic in his revenge

when his planned scientific breakthrough goes wrong and turns

him into a kind of octopus-robot.

But the movie spends an unusual amount of time letting us get to

know its characters, so that viewers truly have a stake in the

high-powered action scenes. (Warning: Those scenes might be

very tough sledding for younger viewers. But if you've seen

"Spider-Man 1," you know what you're in for anyway.)

Out of a flawless cast, I end by singling out thoroughly winning

Kirsten Dunst as M.J., Peter/Spidey's love interest. Her dreamy,

sunny face grounds the story in happy normalcy. And her final

scene tops even "S1's" much-ballyhooed kiss.

This movie has it all. Go.

Review of THE TERMINAL

by STEVEN BAILEY

If Charlie Chaplin was still alive and creating, it's easy to imagine

him making a light comedy as richly satisfying as "The Terminal."

Just as Chaplin used to take a prop and wring every possible gag

out of it, Steven Spielberg's prop is a New York airport terminal

from which he extracts every story possibility. And Spielberg's

Chaplin is Tom Hanks, who takes a potentially show-offy, Meryl

Streep-type role and turns it into a movie character for the ages.= Hanks' role is Viktor Navorski, a European immigrant who

becomes a modern-day "man without a country" when his native

land gets embroiled in a revolution. Viktor can't return home

because his country is under siege, and he can't legally enter New

York until his country's new leadership is recognized by the U.S.

So Viktor has no choice but to live in the terminal--much to the

consternation of Frank Dixon (Stanley Tucci), whose chances of

becoming the terminal's top dog are jeopardized by Viktor's

constantly being under foot.= The movie's premise is laid out pretty flatly in the first ten minutes,

which begins to sink one's hopes. But it's as though Spielberg

wants to get the mandatory stuff out of the way quickly so he can

explore all of the possibilities in his huge playtoy. And he spins

Viktor through every facet of the terminal like a colorful top,

involving the terminal's quirky workers in his meager existence.= In that sense, "The Terminal" is a lot like "Being There" (1979),

where Peter Sellers played an illiterate simpleton on whom

politicians projected their needs and desires. But Hanks is far

from a blank slate. His body language, physical comedy, and

deceptively simple dialogue speak volumes. Chaplin regretted

having to give up silent movies because he felt that his "Little

Tramp" could not express himself uniquely with sound. I think

something like "The Terminal" would have been an effective

solution.= That's not to belittle Hanks' winning co-stars, especially Catherine

Zeta-Jones as Viktor's potential love interest and Chi McBride as

one of Viktor's many supporters. They all give Spielberg's work the

sheen of a big, beautiful dream.=

What is it about "Scooby-Doo" that raises critics' hackles? The same reviewers who find sedimentary layers of meaning in "Lord of the Rings" are the first to lay into a live version of a piffling kids' cartoon. As for me, an ounce of Matthew Lillard's Shaggy is worth a pound of Mike Myers' Cat in the Hat. **

The really odd thing is that "Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed" is a noticeable improvement over the first movie--relatively speaking, of course. In the first "SD," only Lillard seemed to be having a lot of fun. In "SD2," the rest of the starring quartet--Linda Cardellini (Velma), Freddie Prinze Jr. (Fred), and Sarah Michelle Gellar (Daphne)--have loosened up considerably. **

And director Raja Gosnell has earned his props. There's an infinite number of shots where wacko winged creatures fly off with flesh-and-blood humans. How Gosnell can even keep track of all this stuff is beyond me. If the "Scooby-Doo" cartoons had been done on such an elaborate scale, maybe they wouldn't have been so razzed-on to start with. **

The wispy plot is that a "Monster Machine" has brought to life all of the freakazoids that the Mystery Inc. gang had previously put to rest. Even thinner subplots involve a love interest for Velma ("Austin Powers" vet Seth Green), and Scooby and Shaggy's efforts to prove that they're "real" detectives and not just food-driven goofballs. Needless to say, monsters are sufficiently conquered, and everyone finds his inner Doo. **

If anything, "SD2" suffers from a sense of false modesty. Indeed, the most unintentionally funny part is when Velma and Daphne assure each other that they're not "hot." This, despite Gellar showing off as much leg as a PG rating will allow, and a scene with Cardellini in a red leather outfit so tight that it squeaks when she walks. **

Besides the "regulars," Green and Peter Boyle seem to be having great fun. The only sour note, naturally, comes from Alicia Silverstone as a smarmy reporter. **

At the very least, "Scooby-Doo 2" fits the logic of a movie week where Jim Carrey is trying to prove how sensitive he can be. **

"Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed" is rated PG for cartoon-style violence and peril, and the inevitable passing-gas joke.

"thirteen" opens with a girl facing the camera, begging some unseen friend to wallop her. By movie's end, you'll be more than happy to grant her wish.

Every post-baby-boomer generation thinks they've cornered the market on teen-age angst. Much has been made of "thirteen's" screenplay having been written by a teenager (Nikki Reed, who also smugly co-stars). But before she wrote her script, Reed would have been well-advised to watch "River's Edge" (1986), which covered the same cliched territory.

Evan Rachel Wood stars as Tracy, a middle-schooler who abandons all self-worth to hang out with a cheap popular girl (Reed) and then can't figure out why she gets into so much trouble.

Melanie, Tracy's clueless mom, is played by Holly Hunter--who exec-produced the movie, and what a vanity production! Hunter deglamorizes herself right down to her varicose veins, all the better to play the sacrificial mother. (She also has a room-trashing scene worthy of "Citizen Kane.") Melanie styles hair for a semi-living, but after a few dozen close-ups of Hunter's dirty fingernails, you forget the movie's dark subtext and instead think, "Eew! Cooties!"

We're meant to cluck at the inevitability of Tracy's downfall, but all I could think was that this family needs some sane advice. Based on the movie's evidence (and glaring plotholes), the doctor is in.

Tracy, if you abandon your old friends to join the "in" crowd, don't be surprised when the old friends forget to tell you that your science project is due. Don't get mad about your mom's here-and-gone boyfriend when your new best friend abandons you every chance she gets. And are you really going to wear that to the mall??

Melanie, earnest mothers do not begin by letting their kid's slutty new friend address them as "Mom." Get more involved in your daughter's life than just telling her that the poem she wrote is "heavy." And for heaven's sake, wash your hands after every styling!

There's a famous series of British documentaries that visits the same group of once-young kids every seven years. It'll be interesting to see Nikki Reed's screenplay for "twenty-six," the sequel in which she realizes what a pretentious teenager she was.

**

I'll get to the plot of "The Gang's All Here" in a minute, because the plot isn't the most memorable part of this movie. The most memorable part is the bananas.

About 20 minutes into the movie, a towering hat of Technicolor fruit appears on the screen, followed by its owner--'40s "Brazilian bombshell" Carmen Miranda. She proceeds to do a number called "The Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat," accompanied by chorus girls who bear bananas. Six-foot-tall bananas that continuously droop and sprout until number's end, when the chorus girls, worn out by the burden of this mutated fruit, lay down for a long siesta on a stage dressed up like an island.

There's a reason this number occurs so early on: It takes you the rest of the movie to convince yourself you actually saw this in a 1943 movie.

But then, this is Busby Berkeley, a director who staged his musical numbers as though he was declaring war. And next to kitsch, war is pretty much the motivator here.

The wafer-thin story involves Andy (James Ellison), a soldier who woos and wins Edie (Alice Faye), a canteen dancer, the night before Andy goes off to World War Two. In what seems an instant, Andy gets decorated and returned home to a victory party thrown by the family of Andy's childhood sweetheart and fiancee--who, unfortunately for Edie, is not Edie.

Will the heartbreak be resolved? Do you really care? The plot is mostly an excuse for some snappy repartee between major '40s stars (in particular, Eugene Pallette and Edward Everett Horton are hilarious), and the kind of musical numbers that seem to drop out of thin air. (In a couple of scenes, Benny Goodman and his orchestra stroll by and do some songs just for the heck of it.)

"The Gang's All Here" is really a 1943 time capsule, but an eye-popping rouser of one. They don't make 'em like this anymore. They didn't make 'em much like this back then, either. It's not out on video or DVD, so look for its sporadic broadcasts on cable TV.

I first saw this Pixar short when it appeared in theaters in 1989 as part of a short-film project sponsored by American Express. It was like a great delight that popped up on the screen and then anonymously disappeared. I just saw the theatrical Pixar release Finding Nemo, and Pixar has had the great good sense to preface their new feature with this charming short. It's a 4-minute gem, with hilarious gags and great music by Bobby McFerrin. I hope Pixar puts this out on the Finding Nemo DVD. In the meantime, if you're seeing Finding Nemo, don't be late--Nemo is very good on its own, but this short is worth the price of admission in itself!

In the late 1980's, a documentary titled Amos 'n Andy: Anatomy of a Controversy looked at the infamous comedy show. Despite the doc's own testimonials by famous black performers who found the show funny, the only way to get the show looked at or praised these days was to surround it with politically correct analysis.

That's most likely the only way that cable TV's Cartoon Network, which owns the rights to Bob Clampett's Snow White parody Coal Black an de Sebben Dwarfs (1943), would ever be able to air this cartoon. Most likely, the Cartoon Networkers won't consider even that ploy, as they have seen fit to remove any possible inflammatory material from their huge backlog of cartoons. That's a great pity, because most of those who have been fortunate enough to view Coal Black regard it as one of Bob Clampett's most jaw-droppingly funny creations.

As has been well documented elsewhere, the unfortunate fact is that, at the time of Coal Black's making, African-Americans were rarely treated as equals to whites on the silver screen. (Dooley Wilson's Sam in Casablanca [1942] is a notable exception, depicting a warm friendship with Humphrey Bogart's Rick. Yet even Sam clears out of the room as soon as Bogie and Ingrid Bergman, the movie's iconic white lovers, reunite.)

And unsubtle stereotypes abound. Just to hit the highlights, "Prince Chawmin'" is a jive-spouting hero with dice for teeth (and he literally turns yellow when So White calls for him to rescue her). "De Sebben Dwarfs" are little more than thick-lipped comic relief.

And the movie begins with the tale being told by a loving "mammy" to her child.

Yet the underlying irony is that the racial aspect is merely a smokescreen for what this cartoon is really about: sex. This film's Wicked Queen doesn't even consider whether she's the fairest one of all; her first words in the story are "Magic mirror on the wall, send me a prince about six feet tall." So White, far from Disney's virginal image of Snow White, wears a low-cut blouse and thigh-high shorts, and she sends blazes of erotic ecstasy through every male she meets. If it weren't for the movie's parody approach, it's difficult to believe that the same censors who got all worked up about Tex Avery's Red Hot Riding Hood series would have let Clampett get away with such brazenness.

The irony is that Bob Clampett intended his cartoon as a tribute to black culture. The movie's hot jazz score (by Eddie Beals) surpasses even Carl Stalling's usual high standards, with some incredible scat singing and white-hot trumpet playing. And So White is voiced by Vivian Dandridge, Dorothy Dandridge's sister, and the Evil Queen is voiced by their mother Ruby, which is enough to at least give the movie a legitimate pedigree. Beyond that, this cartoon is to Clampett's oeuvre what What's Opera, Doc? is to Chuck Jones's canon--a look at a Warner Bros. cartoon director at the height of his control. Like Jones's opera parody/tribute, Coal Black goes beyond funny to just plain astounding. Even in fifth-generation bootlegs, the cartoon is rich in the sort of frame-exploding work that has made Clampett's reputation. Even though many of the wartime references (to shortages and the military) date this cartoon far worse that most WB efforts, the jokes still come across quite clearly. (When Mammy tells us how rich the Evil Queen is, the camera pans across her riches: piles of stockpiled sugar and rubber tires.)

There is plenty to be offended about in Coal Black an de Sebben Dwarfs, if offense is all that you seek. But the most memorable cartoons are usually the ones that get somebody's dander up. In an era where Keenan Ivory Wayans makes the most profitable Afro-American movie ever (Scary Movie) by taking R-rated swipes at penises and mental retardation, surely there's room in our culture for a comparatively benign (and far funnier) six-minute cartoon.

I have what I call "The Adrienne Barbeau Theorem," which is as

follows: Big breasts, in and of themselves, are not enough reason to

watch a terrible movie. Ironically, there are two movies that strongly

test my theorem, and one of them is Adrienne Barbeau's Swamp Thing (see

my Epinions review). The other is an abysmal '80s slasher flick titled

They're Playing with Fire.

Sybil Danning plays an English professor (so much for realism) who

seduces one of her young students (Eric Brown) in order to make him a

patsy in a murder plot in which she's involved. Despite its familiar

ring, this plotline is several generations (not to mention quality

points) removed from Double Indemnity and its ilk. In fact, the movie's

slasher motif is so sordid, even for this genre, that it's painful to

watch. The movie would be deservedly forgotten, were it not for

Danning's astounding sex scenes.

These scenes, particularly the first one, are as jaw-dropping as

anything you're likely to see in a mainstream, R-rated movie. While not

as anatomically graphic as your average porn video, Danning in the

altogether amply displays enough, er, enthusiasm to get her point

across. In fact, she's so enthusiastic, you lose any sympathy for the

kid she's seducing. Here's this gorgeous, buxom blonde twisting the

night away on top of him, and he can't think of anything better to do

than *make conversation* with her! Obviously, the kid needs an education

in more than English.

Other than the all-too-brief scenes in which Danning demonstrates why a

date with her would fetch a small fortune on an auction block, the

movie's only element of interest is in seeing Alvy Moore, who played

Hooterville county agent Hank Kimball on TV's "Green Acres,"

hitting a career low as a gas-station manager who's dumb enough to hire

and re-hire the kid as an attendant even after he's dumped the job on

the promise of some loot from Danning's English professor. The only

thing that could have made this movie more bad-memorable would be to

pair Danning with fluttery Hank Kimball: "Welcome to Hootersville,

I mean Hooterville! Sorry, I was blinded by your headlights, I mean my

car headlights. The car is strangely stacked, I mean built, I

mean..."

Watch this one only its first five minutes, a fast-paced and genuinely funny montage of clips from Lewis's earlier comedies. Then, if you dare, settle back and get ready for a jaw-dropping compendium of unfunny gags, rip-offs from earlier movies (an entire set-up is lifted from Lewis's The Bellboy), and product placement ads galore.

Early on in his fame, Steve Martin gave massive credit to Jerry Lewis' style of zaniness. The Absent-Minded Waiter is an obvious homage to Lewis' wacko style, and a superb one at that.

Pundits will say it's little more than an extended early-"Saturday Night Live" sketch--"SNL" vet Buck Henry even has a major role--but for sheerly silly laughs, it can't be beat. Martin plays the most moronic waiter ever hired for a restaurant. Henry plays a war-veteran of AMW's shenanigans who brings his wife (Garr) to the restaurant for a crash course. It's no-hold-barred craziness, and since it lasts only seven minutes, it's just long enough to be hilarious and not unbearable.

Martin and fellow writer Carl Gottlieb obviously hit pay dirt a couple of years later with The Jerk, but this is an extremely funny warm-up for that feature. (In fact, Martin used it as a prologue for his live stand-up act for years.) It's been released on video, so search hard for it--it's worth the while.

I've just read an interesting book titled Brave Dames and Wimpettes, in which novelist Susan Isaacs posits that most modern movie heroines still use old feminine wiles instead of brainpower to get what they want.

Urgently recommended viewing for Ms. Isaacs would be Panic Room, one of the best thrillers I've seen in years.

The movie's heroines are Meg Altman (Jodie Foster), a recent divorcee, and her young daughter Sarah (Kristen Stewart). They've just moved into a three-story Manhattan home of the kind to be found more easily in movies than in Manhattan. The prime draw of this house is its "panic room." In the event of a burglary or similar emergency, the resident locks himself inside this room and uses its separate phone line to call the police.

On their very first night in the house, Meg and Sarah find out just how good to be true this room is, when three unruly burglars break in. It happens that the house's previous owner left a few million dollars behind in the house, and wouldn't you know it, the money's in the same panic room where Meg and Sarah lock themselves. Oh, and for good measure, Meg didn't have a chance to get the separate phone line hooked up.

Yeah, I know, this whole set-up could happen only in the movies. But before the thrills are unleashed, the movie takes the time to set up the relationship between Meg and Sarah, and it's nicely done. Because we get to know them for a while, we have a stake in their peril.

And believe me, these are not two women who sit around screaming and waiting for some moronically written boogie-men to kill them. Simply because the marvelous screenplay by David Koepp (Jurassic Park) allows these women to think, they manage to stay one step ahead of the burglars, who eventually find themselves cowering as much as those wimpettes Isaacs writes about. You'll not have heard such cheering from a movie audience in quite a while.

Except for some overly swooping camera movement at the beginning, direction by David Fincher--formerly known for such existential dreariness as Fight Club and The Game--is as perfectly taut as you could hope to find in a thriller.

As for the lead actresses--what a wealth! According to The Internet Movie Database, Kristen Stewart is only *11 years old*. But with her interplay with Foster and her remarkable subtlety, she can only be described as...well, the next Jodie Foster.

And what is there to say about Foster? I find her one of the most beautiful women in movies, simply because she makes intelligence sexy.

Going to a seeming no-brainer like Panic Room is like expecting an ice-cream cone and getting a dinner at Four Seasons.

Panic Room is rated R for much adult language,

For a while, the locally-based documentary Mule Skinner Blues has its charms. But this ostensibly charming story of trailer-park residents who make their own horror movie starts to creak at about the halfway point, and eventually it just becomes annoying.

The movie's shaggy-dog tale is that Mayport resident Beanie Andrew appeared as an extra in a music video and then charmed the video crew so much that they decided to film his story. And for a while, one can almost believe that. Andrew claims it's been his life's dream to make a movie, and when he gets hold of a video camera, he finagles any neighbor with a smidgeon of talent to bring his project to fruition.

Said locals include guitarists Steve Walker and Ricky Lix, a yodeling singer named Miss Jeanie, and an erstwhile horror-story writer, Larry Parrot. They all have local followings of sorts, so even when the on-screen evidence of their talent is minimal, Andrew's assurance that they call pull off this gig is enough to satisfy you--at least for a while.

But when the movie starts using montage tricks and extensive clips from old horror films to goose its story along, it gives its own game away. Then the movie inexplicably leaps ahead three years, and it turns very bitter. Steve and Ricky have had a falling-out, Steve and Jeanie have lost their mates, and Andrew is recovering from alcoholism.

Finally--and again, inexplicably--Andrew and Parrot's 15-minute horror epic gets its debut in Jacksonville Beach, without a word as to how it ever got assembled or screened. And the fact that the movie got even a small premiere is supposed to be enough to satisfy its makers (and the audience of Mule Skinner Blues).

So we're left with deeply conflicting messages. Andrew is meant to be seen as a paragon of simple wisdom, even though his optimism doesn't last. Andrew and Parrot have dreams of making it big and yet are content with a one-night, rinky-dink screening of their movie. And the other performers go right back to the obscurity from which they came, without a word of complaint.

Like the down-home documentary Gates of Heaven (to which this movie has been much compared), Mule Skinner Blues labors mightily to uncover the astounding depth of simple folk. But I just don't buy into this cracker-barrel-wisdom concept. Even the movie's tagline--"Talent is half the battle, getting discovered is the other"--is a lie. Not content with their local followings, the "entertainers" in Blues seem far more concerned with making it big than with honi

Famed cartoon director Chuck Jones has said that this cartoon came about because his then-producer, Edward Selzer, caught him doodling a drawing of a bull one day and told Jones that he was *not* to make cartoon about bullfighting. Of such defiant acts are great cartoons made. This is one of the all-time great Looney Tunes, with great camera angles (note the ant's-eye view of a confident Bugs as the bull gains ground on him), hilarious give-and-take between Bugs and his adversary, and a gut-busting ending (beautifully scored by Carl Stalling). For years, CBS was stupid enough to broadcast this cartoon with its fantastic climax cruelly edited. You can now find the whole thing intact in Jones' The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie and on the Jones compilation videocassette From Hare to Eternity, as well as in intermittent broadcasts on Cartoon Network

I was channel-surfing the other day and came across this one on AMC Romance Classics. Who thought this movie was either funny or romantic? It's a dreary parade of Italian stereotypes that seems to have been photographed through the same Vaselined lens that shot PORKY'S. It's no surprise to see Lainie Kazan and her ever-expanding bosom overemoting, but I thought Paul Sorvino was above this kind of drek. The weirdest moment is seeing Kazan and Renee Taylor (both of whom had recurring roles on Fran Drescher's TV show "The Nanny") together on screen. Evidently, these aging harpies can't make up their minds whether they're Italian

Another chapter in the ongoing question, whatever happened to Mel Brooks's sense of humor? It starts out nicely enough, with Mel as Trump-like mogul Goddard Bolt ("You can call me God"), who accepts a bet that he can't live on the streets for 30 days. But the moment the movie hits the streets, it turns into a pathos-laden mess, with occasional "funny" bits interjected (Mel sees a black kid break-dancing for money and tries to do a vaudeville buck-and-wing, yuk, yuk). Leslie Ann Warren is nothing short of wasted. The worst part is this movie's musical number, in which Brooks and Warren do a silent dance to Cole Porter's "Easy to Love." Brooks's musical parodies are usually the highlights of his movies; here he plays the whole thing straight, like a dancing excerpt from an aging guest star on "The Carol Burnett Show" (on which Rudy DeLuca, this film's co-writer, began his career). Go rent Charlie Chaplin's THE KID, which covered the same ground 70 years before and did a lot

Some of the Database comments on this movie are mind-boggling. In this movie, Danning conspicuously displays what she's best-known for, and it sure ain't her thespian skills, buddy.

Her three sex scenes in the movie are unbelievably enthusiastic and should send most slobbering males to the fast-forward button to find the next such scene. The rest of the movie is a dreary slasher thriller that, most incredulously, even manages a happy ending. You know what level the movie's at when the student whom Danning is deflowering tries to carry on a mundane conversation while this busty vixen is on top

Big-bust enthusiasts will greatly appreciate Adrienne Barbeau's mostly-unzipped outfit, and a nifty cameo by Valerie Perrine as the only cop who slows her down. (Since the movie is rated only PG, it skips the obvious next step in the Perrine-Barbeau fantasy, in which Adrienne would use more dramatic measures to worm her way out of a ticket.) The rest of the movie plays like a car-crash version of "The Love Boat," in which aging stars amuse themselves with supposedly hysterical cameos. (Aging Rat Packers Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. scrape the bottom of the barrel as bogus priests.) Why do the bustiest stars always appear in the wor

An uneven but generally funny collection of sketches and blackout gags from the guys who would go on to do AIRPLANE! and THE NAKED GUN. Worth the price of the rental just for "A Fistful of Yen" (an inspired kung-fu parody), an educational-film spoof, and a cameo appearance by Tony Dow as Wally Cleaver. Plus, if you're a big-bust fan, Uschi Digard's no-holds-barred display of her incredible chest in the "Catholic High School Girls in

Trouble" segment will make your jaw

Jane Russell was an underrated comedienne and singer (see SON OF PALEFACE and GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES), but you'd never guess it from her display here. A real stinker, produced by Howard Hughes in his all-too-successful effort to kill off RKO Radio Pictures.

The movie kills its first opportunity to show off sexy Jane when it places her in a bubble bath and then has her chastely singing "I'll Be Switched (If I Ain't Gettin' Hitched)"--and it's all downhill from there. In her autobiography, Russell apologized for the movie's number "Lookin' for Trouble" because it was supposedly so risque--nowadays you could show it on The Disney Channel. (By the way, said autobiography has a jaw-dropping photo of Russell in a bikini, far sexier than anything

I'm sure I'd catch slack from anyone who doesn't nominate SINGIN' IN THE RAIN as the greatest movie musical ever. But this one is just pure escapism. Great songs, great leads, great color and costumes, great everything. I'm not a huge Marilyn Monroe fan, but she's quite endearing here, and her forthright speech at the end of the movie is almost a blow for feminism. And Jane Russell's hip-shaking parody of Monroe near the end of the movie is quite a wowser. I just love this

A terrifically funny movie. Bob Hope's wisecracking persona and writer-director Frank Tashlin's cartoon-like gags make a perfect blend. And anyone who enjoys Jane Russell has to check out her opening shot in the movie, in which the camera pans up her gorgeous legs while va-va-voom plays on the soundtrack.

Top-notch comedy in every department

"Must" viewing for all Stan and Ollie fans, as they make short shrift of an upscale hotel. It's also worth viewing for what is surely the only erotic moment in a Laurel & Hardy fan, as Stan causes Jean Harlow to inadvertently lose her dress. In R-rated terms it's nothing, but for 1929, it's pretty darn

A lot of the humor in this movie might be "inside" Hollywood stuff, I grant you. Nevertheless, THE MUSE is one of the most gratifying experiences I've had at a theater this year. After seeing any number of brainless comedies, it's so satisfying to see one with some intelligence behind it. And I have to think that any country with "Entertainment Tonight" as a top-rated show can't be media-savvy enough to enjoy the in-jokes in this wonderful, delightful film. Please, if you enjoy show-biz-type comedy, or if you've even ever had writer's block, go see this one...you won't be disap

Even Chevy Chase doesn't look interested in this stuff anymore. And pity poor Beverly D'Angelo, one of the sexiest and most wasted actresses in the history of movies. You want a good Vegas comedy? Rent Albert Brooks' LOST IN AMERICA