Think of this overwrought comedy as a more ponderous variation on the 1983 Keaton vehicle Mr. Mom. In this case, Keaton plays a chronically harried Los Angeles construction foreman who has himself cloned at the genetic research lab of a client (Harris Yulin) so that the clone can relieve some of his workload. He eventually has another clone made to help out the first one, and the first clone generates a third, a distorted copy who comes out as an annoying mix of Adam Sandler, the young Jerry Lewis and Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man.
Director Harold Ramis uses his computerized effects nicely—the multiple Keatons coexist onscreen simultaneously in convincing fashion. Indeed, the effects are much more accomplished than the script, which only clumsily exploits the inventive cloning premise and bogs down in a maudlin digression involving the details of Keaton's and MacDowell's unhappy marriage.
MacDowell's leaden approach to comedy isn't helped by the fact that she's playing a sullen, self-pitying wife. Keaton, a past master at throwaway lines, maintains the often frenetic pace, helped by Ramis's old SCTV pal Levy as an irascible cement contractor and Richard Masur as Keaton's boss. Everyone seems to be trying hard, but there's little more than one joke here. When you've seen one Keaton, you've seen them all. (PG-13)
Anne Heche, Catherine Keener
This tart treat does way more than merely ambulate and converse. Walking and Talking is a sharply observed comedy about what happens to the longtime friendship between two women, both nearing 30, when one decides to marry. The movie is about growing up and moving on, learning to compromise, and all the other sad, funny and irritating stuff that occurs along the way to truly becoming an adult.
Walking catches these two as one's life is changing and the other's isn't. Both are feeling wobbly. Heche, playing the engaged one, a student therapist, picks fights with her fiancé (Todd Field) and flirts with the waiter at her local java bar. Keener, still single and a classified ads editor, leaves rambling messages on Heche's answering machine about how vile the sponge in Keener's own kitchen sink smells and begins dating the dorky clerk (Kevin Corrigan) at her video store, a fellow she refers to as "the ugly guy."
Writer-director Nicole Holofcener, making a whizbang full-length feature debut, gets her characters and their actions exactly right, right down to a running bit about Keener's always returning borrowed clothes to Heche either unwashed or unironed. Heche (The Juror) and, especially, Keener (Living in Oblivion) nail their roles; these are actresses with bright futures. Playing the men in their lives, Field is sweetly charming, Corrigan gives one new respect for video clerks, and Liev Schreiber is hilarious as an old beau of Keener's whose sex life of late is limited to renting dirty movies and making heavy-breathing, long-distance phone calls to a female bellhop he met at an L.A. hotel. (R)
Alain Delon
No matter how powerful a sun-screen you wear, you'll still be scorched by the pernicious heat of Purple Noon. This sunbaked French thriller, originally released in 1960 and now reissued under Martin Scorsese's imprimatur, is an elegant tale of murder on the French Riviera. Delon, looking as languidly sleek and dangerous as a panther at rest, portrays an amoral young man who knocks off a playboy pal (Maurice Ronet) and then coolly takes possession of the dead man's name, bank account and, eventually, fiancée (Marie Laforêt). As directed by René Clément (Forbidden Games), it's all très smart, sexy and suspenseful, and Delon, well, let's just say he is one mighty cute croissant. (PG-13)
>Trainspotting
JUNK CULTURE
SUMMER MOVIES have brought us shootings, explosions, alien attacks—every kind of violence but no controversy. That may change on July 19, when Britain's Trainspotting arrives. The story of Edinburgh youths who steal and swear, Trainspotting has already caused an uproar in the U.K. Why? Because the characters—charming, in a squalid sort of way—wallow in heroin. One calls the drug "the best orgasm you've ever had; multiply it by a thousand and you're still nowhere near it."
London's Daily Mail said Trainspotting may turn on "millions of young people to the pleasures of heroin." It is certainly luring folks to theaters: the $2.5 million film has grossed over $20 million, making it the second most popular British film in the U.K. behind Four Weddings and a Funeral ($42 million). In the U.S., the R-rated movie will be distributed by Miramax. But the Disney-owned company says it's not worried about promoting drug use. "If you are going to give heroin a look," says marketing president Mark Gill, "this will be the movie to persuade you to look away."
- Contributors:
- Ralph Novak,
- Leah Rozen,
- Allison Lynn.
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!
