fILM

Rip It Up, Issue 122, 1 September 1987, Page 42

fILM

,BURGLAR Director: Hugh Hudson With a track record consisting of The Colour Purple, Jumping Jack Flash and now Burglar, one might be forgiven for wondering what is all the fuss about Whoopi Goldberg. There's no denying the lady has a nice line in cool jive, but even that’s not much of an achievement alongside the gross mugging and shrieking of Bob Goldthwait as one of her offsiders in Burglar. Not only is Burglar wasteful of its real talents — Lesley Ann Warren (the platinum moll/chorus girt in Victor/ Victoria) and John Goodman (so funny in both True Stories and Raising Arizona) have criminally little to do — but when James Handy turns out to be the psychopathic homosexual villain, s we’re plunged right back in the retributional morality of post-McCarthy Hollywood. Hugh Hudson proves, as if we needed to have it confirmed, that his soul is pure box office, and Goldberg provides a built-in critical reaction when she persists in muttering throughout the film, "I gotta get out of this shit.” William Dart BLIND DATE Director: Blake Edwards Pity the poor starlet who launches her career as Mugette No. 3 in Blake Edwards’ latest comedy, a lamentable piece of assembly line trash. To start with, Blind Date is built upon the thinnest of premises (in most comedies drunken antics might account for one climactic scene — certainly

Theme’ is an instrumental by Mike Farrell, developing a simple guitar riff with plenty of keyboards, drums and effects. It’s like a three minute song introduction. The Undertakers ‘The Shadow Pattern on the Wall’(Ode 12”) Four rather naive tracks with possibilities, had they been strictly arranged and shortened. ‘Let Me In’ is a British invasion soundalike; ‘Panic in Needle Park’ (“I love you like a hole in my arm”) two tone-ish, with good horn delay. 10 Years Ago’ with simple keyboards is very repetitive and makes the mistake of slowing down, while ‘When I’m With You’ chugs along with some good guitar lines running through. The major weak links here are the bass player, and especially the morose vocal. But this shows promise, and serves as a clean demo. National Anthem ‘Wonderful Reason’ (Reaction) There is some excellent sax work hidden in this laconic song, more life and humour and it might be a pop sleeper. But it plods, and the recurring motif irritates, not hooks, the listener. ‘Guns’ is a grandstanding number with epic vocal and phased acoustic guitars, resulting in early 70s Moody Blues; the coda showed promise. Chris Bourke

not a whole movie) and it reveals an unpleasant strain of misogyny that Kim Basinger’s one-key performance is unable to negate. With a young Shirley MacLaine in the role, the project might have had some chance of success. There’s an air of desperation in a film that has Graham Stark baring a middle-aged buttocks for a cheap laugh (unless this too was intended as an in-built critical reaction for the cognoscenti) and it’s sad to see Henry Mancini’s suave muzak cheek-to-cheek with Billy Vera and the Beaters. Best summed up, perhaps, as The Party with an awful hangover. William Dart THE SECRETOF MY SUCCESS Director: Herbert Ross After the alltime low of White Lights, one might have thought there was no way but up for Herbert Ross. So, with a quick juggle of cliches, Ross has come up with a film that purports to be a satire of the tough world of American big business. Enter Michael J ! Fox, squeaky clean and straight from Kansas, as a Pollyanna of the boardroom — and the rest of the film is as corn-fed as the state from which Fox hails. A little lean on the script side, Success depends far too much on interminable chases around office complexes and equally tedious sequences showing the young lovers courting around the Big Apple. When the characters are allowed to create some comedy, as in Margaret Whitton’s rapacious seduction of the flustered young hero, a few sparks fly. But such moments are few and far between, and for far too much of the film, it comes across as nothing but an excuse for the soundtrack album.

William Dart