The Courier-Journal from Louisville, Kentucky • Page 37

C5 THE COLRIER JOURNAL, THURSDAY, MAY 26, 1977 SUNDRESSING 4 WCJ 55 Welcome to L.A.' lacks master's touch THE BARt ESSENTML A.M. TO P.M.I A STEAL! FLOUNCED FOR FUN SIZES 38 TO 48 noons and balmy summer nights, our freshy woodsy prints ruffled and shirredl ion, carerree conon By WILLIAM MOOTZ Courier-Journal Critic It's Christmastime in Los Angeles. Tinsel bedecks the mansions of the rich and famous. Colored lights flicker on green trees in the midst of lush, manicured lawns. And the whole city is a sprawling vista of loveless lives.

That's the way the City of the Angels at any rate, in Alan Rudolph's "Welcome to L.A.," a visually beautiful and emotionally studied new arrival at Alpha '3 Twin Cinemas. Ten characters are on the prowl in "Welcome to L.A." Each of them is in desperate need of human contact. Wives are bereft of husbands. Fathers have polyester in whiteblue, whitegreen or bluewhite, VERY SPECML Al Keith Carradine and Sally Kellerman portray two of the characters seeking an escape from loneliness in "Welcome to L.A." 15.99 ent agent trying to renew an affair with a younger client, is larger than the life is too bland and given too often to sopli-omoric platitudes about the sheer exhaustion of existing to carry the weight Rudolph places on it. Other movies have tried the same trick, of course.

I remember with a certain lingering horror the way a great andante by Mozart was trivialized by "Elvira Madigan." Still, Mozart is a better point of departure for this sort of effect than Baskin. Baskin plays one of the film's characters, a rock star trying to cut a successful recording. The monotony of his repeating, again and again, the same phrases from the same vacuous song, is eventually numbing. Rudolph is a protege of Robert Alt-man, who's the producer of "Welcome to L.A." He worked closely with Altman during the filming of "Nashville," and his "Welcome" looks and sounds like a spin-off from that masterful film. But "Welcome to L.A." lacks the enormous energy that pulses through almost any movie by Altman.

It keeps reminding a viewer of those reproductions you see students painting in art museums the world over. The techniques are similar to those of the master, and the colors are sometimes right, with mood almost a true reflection of the original. Yet the copy is stillborn. And so is "Welcome to L.A." Mono- that surrounds her. A more experienced FLOOR ONE director than Rudoph might have found Movie review ways to keep her under control.

As it is, she simply spills over the framework of her every scene, hamming it up and get ting away with it because her talent is tony hangs over it as the smog does over its long shots of the city. Rudolph lets the emptiness of his Los Angeles, deliberately set up as a synmbol of American life, engulf his movie. We watch and listen intently, because Rudolph is obviously a director with ideas. He's a nice antidote, therefore, to the moral stagnation of the average American film these days. Still, "Welcome to L.A." never arrives at its promised destination.

Like L.A.'s famous freeways, it just winds on and on, with a final destination elusively out of reach. There's a certain pretention, too, in awe-inspiring. The rest of the cast, however, fits more comfortably into the movies lost contact with sons. Executives are deserted by mistresses. Lovers turn to booze to escape the clutches of dying passions.

And morning comes early for all of them, because dawn finds them awakening in the beds of strangers. Rudolph bases his "Welcome to L.A." on a suite of rock songs by Richard Bas-kin, which may not be the best way to organize a movie. Baskin's suite, at any rate, called "City of One-Night Stands," 31S W. Walnut. Open Mon 30 to 400.

Tiws-Sat LANE BRYANT scheme. Harvey Keitel is especially good as an advertising executive on the make, and Sally Kellerman is at her most alluring as a woman who momentarily arouses his passion. Lauren Hutton is splendidly enigmatic as a photogapher who concentrates on taking pictures of corners "and makes sense out of them," while John Consi-dine has one gripping scene as a businessman who can sexually turn on only by fantasizing in the presence of whores. Less impressive in this distinguished company are Keith Carradine, Geraldine Chaplin, and Sissy Spacek, mainly because their roles are a wasteland of cliches. But all work as a tight ensemble in a movie that is indolent, sensual and philsophically naive.

The rating: R. Critic's comments: Female nudity. Simulated sex. But the context of the film is totally without THE LARGEST SELECTION OF SPECML-SIZE MSHIONS ANYWHERE! 'Star Wars' twinkles for TV-cartoon set only Rudolph's script. He opens with a troubled woman staring into his camera, proclaiming, "People deceive themselves here.

That's how they fall in love." When, nearly two hours later, he cops out with another character saying, "Time has a way of resolving problems," it's hard not to feel cheated. Time hasn't helped Rudolph a bit. "Welcome to L.A." is full of unresolved themes, and too often falls prey to a grandiose way of overstating the obvious, it never releases its grasp on our attention. For one thing, the photography, by Dave Meyers, is stunning. For another, the movie is crammed with intelligent actors creating memorable emotional vignettes.

Viveca Lindfors, playing an aging tal Interested in being a newspaper carrier? If you're 1 4 or older and want more details, call 582-4752 The Courier-Journal The Louisville Times VwtousH ug (way EartfW, (jMttfb- MuM Coma? (kMw41jl Kij Mioviay id) 3 axMtiXJWsVo i By SCOTT HAMMEV Courier-Journal Critic "Burn him!" yelled one of the teenagers behind me as one space ship gunning down another with laser beams filled the screen. The occasion was a showing of "Star Wars," a new science-fiction film that started last night at the Showcase Cinemas. Devotees of science fiction, such as the young man behind me, are a subculture to themselves, and, since "Star Wars" was designed for them, the opinion of someone outside the cult probably won't carry much weight. In any case, from the perspective of one who is neither a lover nor a hater of science fiction, "Star Wars'' comes older than 15. But, thanks to its special-effects artistry, it entertains that same audience much more effectively.

Monsters abound, the forces of Good triumph, and there's an abundance of extraterrestrial violence exceptionally well executed by the movie-studio technicians. Many grown men may have preserved a bit of childhood interest in bizarre creatures battling it out in remote parts of the universe. For them, "Star Wars" may be nostalgic and entertaining; for their sons, it will likely be a total delight. But what does "Star Wars" hold for all those unsmitlen with a passion for science fiction? Not much, I'm afraid. The best recent movie science fiction, films such as Stanley Kubrick's "2001" or the original "Planet of the Apes" di reeled by Franklin Schafner, succeeded for non-sci-fi-addicts because their drama had a power even greater than their special effects.

"Star Wars" doesn't. Though endowed with effects easily equal to, if not supe JIP OF OUR NEW STORE IN DECATUR, ALABAMA Movie review MIX MATCH TOPS SHORTS Reg. 8.99 off as occasionally impressive in its special effects but frequently boring with its fairy-tale plot. Of course, dramas in which Good battled Evil over the fate of the Universe have a credibilty problem at the start. And when both the forces of light and the, forces of dark are represented in large part by bizarre mutants with only minimal human traits, taking the story seriously is even harder.

And so it is with "Star Wars." The film was made by a young director, named George Lucas, whose last "American Graffiti," was bursting with vitality and imagination and was extraordinarily profitable. With his next effort. Lucas has gone again to the world of adolescence. But instead of being both for and about kids, as "American Graffiti" was, this movie is only for them. "Star Wars" never climbs above the level of Saturday-morning television shows, programs intended for no one rior to, those earlier films, its drama is relentlessly childish.

Mature eyes must wait through awkward scenes of dialogue for the deftly engineered scenes of intergalactic warfare. Occasional comic relief, primarily in the form of two robots who do a kind of Laurel-and-Hardy act, don't help much. "Star Wars" might be a great outing for a parent trying to entertain a gang of 10-year-old boys. But for adults unaccompanied by children and not obsessively devoted to science fiction, "Star Wars" may seem no more sophisticated or believable than an old Spider Man comic book. Rated PG.

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