Albert Brooks, Meryl Streep
Writing, directing and acting his whimsical little heart out. Brooks proves in this postmortem comedy that there is indeed mirth after death.
He plays a selfish, rarely-do-well Los Angeles ad executive who accidentally drives his new car into a bus. He then finds himself in a transitional mode, in which he goes on trial to determine whether he is qualified to advance to a higher state of life or will be reincarnated back to earth.
Judgment City is a benign place, whose most attractive quality is that you can eat as much as you want without gaining weight—waiters routinely serve each diner three pounds of pasta for their entree. Brooks's lawyer. Rip Torn, is a jocular sort except for his strained sense of humor; he tells Brooks that while there is no hell, "I hear L.A. is just about as bad these days." Even the prosecutor, Lee Grant, is fairly benevolent as she attempts to prove-by displaying replays of crucial points in Brooks's life—that he has not learned to overcome his many fears, a shortcoming that has kept him earthbound for a number of lifetimes.
Brooks's hypercalm acting style helps maintain the subtle comic tone. After he meets fellow defendant Streep (at a Judgment City nightclub where a stand-up comedian is loud enough, though not funny enough, to rouse the dead), he notes that he may be leading an underprivileged afterlife; she finds boxes of expensive chocolates on her hotel room pillow every night, while he has to make do with a mint.
Then during a trial break, the couple visit the popular Past Lives Pavilion to see holographic images of their former selves—in a program introduced by Shirley Mac-Laine, playing herself.
Most of us being a smidge touchy on the subject of dying. Brooks has to keep a sharp eye on the Bad-Taste-O-Meter and never sullies his quiet punch lines. He has trouble only insofar as he never resolves the fact that Streep (whose performance is winningly sweet and easy) left two young children behind when she died. Only at the end, when he takes a predictable, unamusing route to the inevitable emotionally satisfying ending—Streep and Brooks die happily ever after—does his imagination falter.
Other than that, he generates a very smooth, ingratiating kind of comedy that never takes itself too seriously, certainly not in a theological way. In the Gospel According to Albert, the point of musing about a universe where reincarnation exists seems to be that we're all a lot safer if we get it right the first time. (PG-13)
Gene Hackman, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio
Remember when Paul Newman got himself into the underdog law-firm business in The Verdict?
Here it's Hackman's turn to play an attorney dedicated to an apparently hopeless case in which he represents the little guy-people who have been involved in explosions that occur when a particular kind of car is struck from the rear. (The make of the car is irrelevant, but, for the record, it is a fictitious name and has nothing to do with horses with spots.)
It's all pretty familiar, though there is a twist. Hackman's opposing counsel in the climactic trial scene is Mastrantonio, his estranged daughter—estranged, because in the days when he was traveling the country as a crusading counterculture lawyer, Hackman was also making lots of out-of-court settlements with women who were not his wife. While the wife, Joanna (The Killing Fields) Merlin, has come to terms with her husband's past transgressions, Mastrantonio hasn't.
Given actors capable of generating as much verbal heat as Hackman and Mastrantonio, this father-daughter clash might have led to some interesting confrontations. But director Michael (Gorillas in the Mist) Apted lets the courtroom theatrics dissolve into laughably unlikely melodrama. And Carolyn Shelby and Christopher Ames (who are collaborators on TV's Growing Pains), writing with entertainment attorney Samantha Shad, never pass the Introduction to Screenplay phase. Hack-man, for instance, has to prattle about "fascist Reagan judges." Merlin, discussing Hackman, has to tell Mastrantonio, "The problem is, you don't know what he is. That makes being you impossible."
Hackman always raises the level of any movie he's in. Mastrantonio, Merlin, Larry (Red Heat) Fishburne, as Hackman's stolid assistant, and Colin (Darkman) Friels, as Mastrantonio's colleague-lover, are first teamers too.
They give the film enough momentum that if you're in a generous mood, haven't seen The Verdict in a while and are tired of Raymond Burr's and Andy Griffith's courtroom antics, you might be inclined to let this film off with a mild reprimand. Don't try it before any hanging judges, though. (R)
John Cusack, James Spader
Anyone who's cynical about the probity of our elected representatives in Washington might think this film—about a brutally ambitious, corrupt young congressional candidate—sounds like more fun than a barrel of pork.
But it comes off as so naive and uninstructive that it might have been called All the King's Little Boys.
Cusack and Spader, two of the more resourceful actors around, play University of Virginia law school roommates. Cusack drops out to work as an aide to a U.S. Senator, played by Richard Widmark. Spader graduates and goes to work in the Justice Department, prosecuting miscreant politicians. By the end, Cusack is running for a House seat from Connecticut, using campaign money handed over in all-too-obvious fashion by Mob-affiliated real estate developer Mandy Patinkin.
What keeps all this from bearing much weight is that director Herbert (My Blue Heaven) Ross and writer Kevin (Working Girl) Wade seem to think corrupt politicians are always not only unscrupulous and greedy but cosmically stupid. In fact they treat almost everyone as if they're cosmically stupid. Spader remains Cusack's devoted friend long after it's clear what a manipulator he is. Spader even forgives Cusack for stealing his intended bride. Imogen (Erik the Viking) Stubbs—Widmark's daughter—and she later forgives Cusack for double-crossing Spader.
(The Fraternal Order of Police may want to take note of the implicit disdain in Spader's response when Stubbs accuses him of not being sufficiently ambitious: "I'm going to be a lawyer, not a cop.")
Meanwhile, Cusack is clawing his way to the top over a series of helpless political hacks and officeholders.
Wade's script gives lip service to a jaded attitude: "Only two things can really wreck a man's political career—being caught with a live boy or a dead girl." "You got that backwards. First, you go to law school. Then you become a total sleazebag." And there's Cusack's creed: "Don't get caught."
Yet whatever insights the film harbors are painted over in the broad-brush depiction of characters who are either thoroughly good or totally evil.
Spader handles his too-noble-to-be-true character with some poise. Stubbs, Widmark and especially Patinkin rise above the situation.
Cusack is too twitchy and obviously guilt-ridden, perhaps because he is so unsubtle as to have accepted a luxurious new home—free—from Patinkin. Cusack isn't walking a fine line so much as leaping into a chasm labeled "Sharp Pointed Rocks, Venomous Serpents and a Crew from 60 Minutes Below."
Brad Sullivan, as Spader's Justice Department boss, is obtrusively awkward, like someone doing a very squinty, very bad Bogart imitation.
For the most part, though, it's the design that's the problem, not the execution. While it's hard to believe that in the era of Watergate. Bert Lance, Abscam and the S&L scandals, any kind of political corruption could be made to appear too outlandish or any politician too dumb, Ross and Wade succeed in doing just that. (R)
>HOT BURGHERS: WHITE PALACE Two St. Louisans sizzle in an older woman-younger man affair. Susan Sarandon is the waitress battling sexism, ageism and classism to woo yuppie James Spader. Corny ending aside, you cheer her on. (MCA/Universal)
HAIL TO THEE, BLITHE SPIRIT; FILM THOU NEVER WERT: GHOST Murder victim Patrick Swayze returns to hang out with sweetie Demi Moore. See, we can see and hear him, and medium Whoopi Goldberg sees and hears him, but Demi can't see or hear him, although ... Oh, forget it. Do, however, watch for the amateurishly designed black splotches, like hell's repo men, claiming the spirits of bad people. (Paramount)
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!
