The Cincinnati Enquirer from Cincinnati, Ohio • Page 33

The Cincinnati Enquirer FILM Friday, July 21, 1995 23 lllliS I 6 Clueless9 isn't Date movie for the '90s gives teen humor charming edge CRITIC'S PICKS BY MARGARET A. McGURK The Cincinnati Enquirer the limits of PG-13, although it's probably familiar stuff to most teens. The raunchiest joke in the movie appears in the trailer, so if you've seen the coming attractions you can judge for yourself. Although the heroine instructs a new friend that MOVIE REVIEW Clueless rich, she's got he's pretty, she's popular, she's i fashion on the brain. You ought to hate her.

You want to hate her. But Cher (Alicia Silverstone), habitual drug and alcohol (PG-13; profanity, sexual innuendo, drug and alcohol use) Alicia Silverstone, Paul Rudd, Stacey use equals the movie shows kids smoking pot and getting drunk in a party scene. Dash, Dan Hedaya, Wallace Shawn, Julie Brown. 97 a and Stacey 1 Dash in VI minutes. At i- Clueless Yf I the perky Beverly Hills matchmaker at the center of Clueless, just too darn sparkly to despise.

Writer-director Amy Heckerling has pulled off an amazing sleight-of-hand by turning a story full of vacuous, overindulged California teen-agers into a light-hearted comedy of manners. She managed it in part with a canny choice of source material Jane Austen's Emma provided some of the bare bones of the story. Heckerling made her directing debut in 1982 with Fast Times at Ridgemont High, another California artifact remembered as a comedy chiefly because of Sean Penn's ditzy dude, Spicoli. In fact, it wasn't a funny movie; it was a depressing portrait of adolescent humiliation. This time, Heckerling has tapped into the sunny side, mining all the humor in the ways teen-agers talk and dress and size up the competition.

It's a very '90s date movie, as sweet as 1989's Heathers was acerbic about a similar world. This film isn't exactly "about" anything. Silverstone plays Cher, a pampered material girl who sees herself as a doer of good deeds, by which she means make-overs National i tf TOP ART FILM: ePosf-man (4 stars) Massimo Troisi, one of Italy's favorite comic actors, infuses his last part with joyous energy in this sweet tale of a postman who enlists Chilean poet-in-exile Pablo Neruda (Philippe Noiret) to help him win a woman's heart. Troisi died only 12 hours after finishing this film, which has won most of the major Italian film awards. At the Esquire Theater.

FOR KIDS: The Indian in the Cupboard (A) The only new children's movie out this week is Free Willy II, a lame successor to the charming original. A better choice is still this marvel of imagination from director Frank Oz. It contains a few mild profanities; scenes of violence are shown on television and played out by toys brought to life in a magical locked cupboard. A must-see. At National Amusements.

if FOR TEEN-AGERS: Clueless (3) Alicia Silverstone as a perky Beverly Hills matchmaker in a modem comedy of manners modeled shrewdly on Jane Austen's Emma. Sunny, summer-weight romance with more wit than the usual teen and love connections. So we see a blizzard of costume changes and a lot of romantic maneuvering that doesn't always work out as intended. Heckerling gets laughs by making fun of a universe where the kids spend staggering amounts of money without a thought a cell phone is attached to every head and every girl has a plastic surgeon. It's all fantasy scene-setting for the frothy business at hand, like the mansion of the wacky heiress in a 1930s screwball comedy.

There is a lot of talk about sex that seems to push mm irrT i I '4- "7' yr.i. 3 Wigstock' is nothing but one big drag EGYiE cream-puff. 97 minutes. At National Amusements. 7J Wlgstock: ins Movie if (Not rated; adult themes) Alexis Arquette, Jackie Beat, Lee Kimble, Joey Arias, Candis shots of people in various stages of drag.

The movie includes more than 35 songs. Of course, it wouldn't be a dragfest without RuPaul, who performs several show-stopping numbers in a glittering white leotard. There are bona fide musical acts, too. Singer Crystal Waters croons her hot single "100 Percent Pure Love" dressed in a man's suit and tie; Deee-Lite's Lady Kier performs "Say Ahhh" and later declares "It was the drag queens that taught me glamour." But although Wigstock is non-stop kitschy, it's not all glitter and press-on nails. Over the years, many performers have died from AIDS-related illnesses, and the film contains tributes to those fallen divas.

The movie also frequently ventures backstage to meet the male performers as they go through the rituals of shaving, tweezing and lacquering. These comrades-in-curlers cling to their onstage per-sonas with an almost obsessive ferocity. Some doff their masks to nervously describe how they have become alienated from relatives and friends. For all their cheeky bravado and campy veneers, you guess that these are fragile, needy people. But the movie glosses over these revelatory moments.

What Wigstock The Movie has to say, mostly, is "You GO, girls." BY JACKIE POTTS Knight-Ridder News Service Their towering, Day-Glo hair stretches toward the heavens. Their high-heel sizes range in the double digits. They ooze glamour even as they're lampooning it They're the sassy, brassy-voiced "girls" of Wigstock: The Movie, a flamboyant, gotta-sing-gotta-dance documentary about the annual New York festival that has been dubbed the "Super Bowl of Drag." Wigstock, the festival, was founded 11 years ago by a group of East Village drag queens who, in typical Hollywood-musical fashion, wanted to "put on a show!" Two years ago, as the fest grew to 30,000 spectators, director Barry Shils began taping the extravaganza. The result is a loopy and often dazzling musical spectacle shot on video, 16mm and 35mm film. Long-legged, broad-shouldered lovelies belt out versions of show tunes and jazz favorites in a variety of teetering, sherbet-colored wigs.

There's a rowdy rendition of "Born to be Wild" by the Dueling Bankheads (David Uku and Clark Render), a pair of Tallulah look-alikes; a stylish dance ensemble number by a taffeta-wearing vixen named Lypsinka (John Epperson); and crowd HOW THEY RATE Excellent Good Fair rr; i Cayne, Crystal Waters, RuPaul, Lady Kier, John Epperson. 85 Poor minutes. At The Esquire Theater. Daisy, a drag queen WW Villi in Wlgstock: i The Movie i.