Doesn't that title suggest the Clinton Administration's answer to "Let Reagan Be Reagan"? Be that as it may, this is a better than average family film of the boy-and-his-dog variety, directed by Simon Wincer. The boy here is a foster kid (Richter, who sometimes looks strikingly like a moppet Kim Novak) and the dog a killer whale that has been languishing in a two-bit marine park. Richter, who is assigned to work there after he's nabbed spray-painting Willy's tank, first befriends him with the sweet, whale-like hum of his harmonica playing. In short order, he has begun training Willy (played by an orca named Keiko and the occasional animatronic puppet) to turn over, eat from his hand and even sidle up onto the concrete apron.
A few of these tricks, frankly, go a long way in a movie. A big animal circling around a big tank can begin to feel claustrophobic to an audience too. And the movie has more plot than any child needs. Will Richter bond with his foster parents? Will he run away with his sallow, deadbeal buddy (Michael Bacall)? Will performance anxiety drive Willy to a breakdown? (Actually, the question of whether Willy really could turn chomper gives the film a weird tension—some of us have never got over Jaws.) And—a melodramatic twist that would reduce Melville to sobs of envy—will the whale be murdered for its insurance money?
This, at least, kicks things into high gear: Willy's escape to the ocean is thoroughly entertaining, and his climactic leap is thrilling. Which leads us to the best thing of all: A long, closing-credit sequence of whales plying the waves at sunset, with Michael Jackson singing the theme song, "Will You Be There." Jackson's tremulous little voice is almost as touching as the high, throbbing moan Willy makes in moments of distress. You come out refreshed, calmed, almost spiritually revived.(PG)
Belle Midler, Kathy Najimy, Sarah Jessica Parker
Midler, her red wig a whipped me ringue mountain and her front teeth protruding like the blade of a snowplow, plays a witch here. Put to death back in 1693 in Salem, Mass., her character has now returned of Halloween night intent on sucking tin life's breath from the town's children to restore her own youth. First, though, she crashes a costume party, where she is mistaken for just another adult guest. Climbing onstage, she belts out "I Put a Spell on You" with all the attitude and vigor of a diva finally back after 300 years between engagements.
It's a great scene. Were that then were more of them in this cluttered muddle of a movie. Hocus can't make up its mind whether it's a campy vehicle for Midler and her witchy siblings played by Najimy and Parker, or a thriller aimed at kids, about how three plucky children foil this evil sister act.
Director Kenny Ortega shows little feel for the material. The three leading ladies, encumbered by layers of latex, huge wigs and voluminous costumes, are rarely allowed to cut loose. Of the younger cast members, Omri Katz and Vinessa Shaw are passable as the adolescent hero and heroine, while cute little Thora Birch, playing Katz's wisenheimer kid sister, neatly steals every scene she's in. (PG)
Andrew McCarthy, Jonathan Silverman, Terry Kiser
Carrying the concept of beating a dead horse to new depths, this piece of drivel is as tediously unimaginative as the 1989 original that hatched it.
The sequel picks up with Kiser, whose death and subsequent service as a comedy prop were the point of the original, turning up in the New York City morgue. McCarthy and Silverman, as employees of the insurance company where Kiser was an embezzling executive, chase his constantly misplaced corpse all over the place in hopes that Bernie's trail will lead to the loot. They wind up in the Virgin Islands, where even the gorgeous scenery of St. Thomas is ill-used by witless writer-director Robert Klane.
There is not a funny line, and most of the sight gags have to do with the corpse's crotch being slammed by hard objects.
Kiser gives an understandably moribund performance. But he is no stiffer than the charmless young McCarthy and Silverman. The movie does confirm that gratuitous sequels are the lamest, most dishonest phenomena of pop culture—not counting beer commercials, of course. (PG-13)
>THERE'S A SCENE—ACTUALLY, SEVERAL scenes—in the current hit Sleepless in Seattle, where women go dewy-eyed even just recalling the 1957 tearjerker, An Affair to remember. The Sleepless plugs have turned Affair into a hot rental, with good reason. "Those were the days when people knew how to be in love," Meg Ryan sobs to Rosie O'Donnell as the two watch, for the umpteenth time, Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr making plans to meet each other again after a long romantic ocean voyage. He's a notorious playboy about to marry an heiress, and she's a kept woman with a Park Avenue penthouse. But now that both have fallen madly in love, they declare themselves ready to give up their meal tickets, get honest jobs and (if their passion has not abated) meet again in six months at the top of the Empire State Building. The hitch: Only minutes before her rendezvous with Grant some 102 stories up, Ken-is hit by a car. Will true love prevail? What do you think? As a date movie, Affair is, well, a bit dated—"We're heading into a rough sea," Kerr tells Grant after their first kiss on deck. "I know," he replies. "We've changed our course today"—but a soppy romance is a soppy romance, and we all need to take a dip periodically. (CBS/Fox Video, $14.98)
- Contributors:
- Tom Gliatto,
- Leah Rozen,
- Ralph Novak.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
