The Des Moines Register from Des Moines, Iowa • Page 43

THE DATEBOOK Tbe Dei Moines Register May 30, 1983-Page 3D Ml wi vy tr i i 1,1 Joan Bunke Movies Chevy Chase romps through 'Fletch' 5 1 5 Si 1 Li: i 1 Chase in "Fletch." who's as kookily sinister in a proctology exam as he was as a hired gun in "Blood then to Gail Stanwyk and the Stanwyks' country club, where Fletch charges a $400 lunch to an unwitting "friend" (William Traylor), and then to a funny-scary encounter with a Doberman guarding a Utah real-estate office. At judicious but not particularly frequent intervals, Fletch reports in to his lame-brain editor (Richard Libertini, a great second banana wasted in a straight role) and gets helpful reports from a fetching young newsroom researcher nicknamed "Larry" (Geena Davis, who played a young soap-opera actress sharing a dressing room with Dorothy Michaels in There isn't a whole lot of comedy in the newsroom stuff largely because editors are many things, but rarely are they either lame-brain or particularly comic. BERGMAN'S SCRIPT alters a number of things in Mcdonald's story line. In the movie, it's the editor rather than his secretary who's the dimwit. Other changes: Fletch's beach and newsroom beat moves from southern Florida to southern California, and whole segments of the complex (and quite readable) novel are telescoped.

One real improvement: Fletch tumbles to the Stanwyk scam a whole lot earlier in the movie than in the novel. Chase does his best comedy numbers in wild fantasies, including a basketball sequence with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and in ludicrous disguises, with incredible noms d'ex-poses: Mister Babar, Igor Stravinsky, Gordon Liddy, Harry Truman, Ted Nugent. His coolest, funniest masquerade is as the aircraft mechanic slicked-back hair, buck teeth, dopey line of patter and all. The film "Fletch" is light, comic and abrasive. It's so lively, in fact, that many moviegoers, having seen it, will be primed for the already scheduled sequel, "Fletch and the Man The detecto-comic combination, as orchestrated here promises more variations on a comic theme than most sequels can deliver.

At Joan Bunke sees it, on a rising scale of one to five stars: fivsars FLETCH, directed by Michael Ritchie, screenplay by Andrew Bergman bated on the novel by Gregory Mcdonald, produced by Alan Greisman and Peter Douglas, with Chevy Chase, Joe Don Baker, Dana Wheeler-Nichok ton, Richard Libertini, Tim Matheson, M. Emmet Walsh and Geena Davit, starts FRIDAY at the RIVER HILLS. Universal. (PG: violence and adult language, humor) 4rT'HE SPIRIT of the character is JL there," says novelist Gregory Mcdonald, and he's not far off the mark: Investigative reporter Irwin "Fletch" Fletcher's impudent approach to life makes the movie "Fletch" work nearly as well as the character does in Mcdonald's Fletch series. But the spirit that dominates director Michael Ritchie's comedy-thriller is Chevy Chase's wise-acre comedy genius.

In "Fletch," Chase manages to be funnier and more consistently in character than he's been through a whole stream of flicks. With slick timing and fine-tuned control. Chase romps through this Fletch story, using his bland, open mug to create little facial essays in insincerity, irreverence and guileless humbug. With tongue waggishly in cheek, Chase reels out the fluent comedy shtick that writer Andrew Bergman has shaped from parts of Mcdonald's Fletch and great chunks of Chase's wise-acre public persona. The character winds up playing more like Chevy Chase mocking the world than Fletch Fletcher cleaning it up even though the real-life comedian and the fictional journalist have a common approach to life thumb to nose, accompanied by slightly curled lip.

Whatever the blend, the comedy comes out smooth, sardonic and (occasionally) silly it's escapist sport that doesn't take itself too seriously, yet knows how to make entertainment out of contemporary life. And there's plenty of conniving modern life here to make sport of: Drug-dealing, official corruption and the crooked centerpiece: a crafty, obvious scam by a rich aviation-firm executive who spots Fletch in his beach-bum outfit, invites him to a meeting and hires said bum to kill him. "Will you kill me?" asks exec Alan Stanwyk (Tim Matheson). "Sure," says Fletch, with that sardonic gleam in his eye that declares: 'I'm no bum dummy." The gleam leads Fletch, who has been working the beach in disguise (flowing prophet's robe and equally flowing beard) and gathering evidence for a big newspaper expose of drug-trafficking, to explore Stan-wyk's story about having incurable bone cancer and choosing murder over suicide so that his wife Gail (Dana Wheeler-Nicholson) will inherit (almost) everything. The story leads Fletch to Stan-wyk's doctor (M.

Emmet Walsh, whose "cover" is working in a fish market; and a bit of fluff who's also a Good Guy, Stacey Sutton (Tanya Roberts), a geologist with an important secret. Director John Glen alternates sequences of actor Walken laughing maniacally with scenes of Roberts simpering or playing heroine while the trim but wooden-looking Moore stretches to handle his part of the stunts riding a free-swinging fire truck ladder through the streets of San Francisco and doing battle (in a cleverly constructed mockup) with the villain atop the Golden Gale Bridge. The locations and the special effects raise this Bond just above the common ruck but the eccentric pacing in Glen's 128-minute flick may cause a few cases of movie twitchitis: To bridge one actionless passage, Glen even stoops to that old hair-raiser, the startled cat. On a rising scale of one to five stars: Dana Wheeler Nicholson and Chevy lot to like and more than enough to dislike. "A View to a Kill," Roger Moore's seventh Bond flick, offers the mixture as before action sequence upon action sequence, plot complications to defy the imagination and impossible carryings-on at glamorous locations.

The glamour is fantastic: It ranges from the Eiffel Tower to the Golden Gate Bridge to the Royal Ascot race course to the grandiloquent horse stables at Chantilly built by the duke of Bourbon, a believer in reincarnation, who in 1719 commissioned Jean Aubert to design stables royal enough to accommodate the duke when he returned to earth as a horse. But like its awkward, rhythmless title, "A View to a Kill" suffers from a certain maladroitness. Ian Fleming's hero, having long since run through genuine Fleming story material and shifted to story lines manufactured from mere titles, seems to have entered a pre-geriatric phase. Moore's Agent Double Oh Seven smirks more and beds less (or less spectacularly) than in his previous outings as the fantasy agent with the license to kill and to lady-kill. Even more disappointing, Moore's much-praised and welcome humor is downplayed in even the double-entendre is given short shrift, although when it comes, it comes with a great thwack between the eyes.

What there's plenty of is special effects, including a dazzling pre-title sequence, shot on locations in Iceland and Switzerland and featuring some spectacular skiing by members of the British Ski Federation, brilliantly photographed by Willy Bogner (Alan Hume is overall director of cinematography). Those shots alone are worth sitting through the mishmash of plot complications devised by Bond-film veterans Richard Maibaum and Mi chael G. Wilson and worth putting up with the one truly revolting action sequence. In that segment, which goes on forever, master villain Max Zorin (Christopher Walken) gleefully machine-guns about seventy-elev-enty-thousand people trapped in a flooding silver mine. (The rationale, of course, is something for everyone: This sequence is for the bloodthirsty among us.) THE PLOT LINE is horrendously intricate so intricate, in fact, that it spawns truly boring stretches of exposition: In the fashion of all Bond-film villains, the blondined, beautiful, immaculately tailored Max Zorin wants to rule the world.

The product of Nazi-spawned and Russian-nurtured genetic hocus-pocus, the brilliant, psychotic Zorin has horse races fixed, inconvenient investigators murdered and lots of microchips hoarded. It's all in aid of his master plot: Combining some explosives with a flooded mine and the known dangers of California's San Andreas Fault, he plans to create a monster double-earthquake and consign to oblivion California's Silicon Valley and all its works and ways and geniuses, including, presumably, Steven Jobs. Zorin is aided and abetted by a company of henchladies, including May Day (Grace Jones), Pan Ho (Papillon Soo Soo), Pola Ivanova (Fiona Fullerton) and Jenny Flex (Alison Doody), plus some real Bad Guys: Scarpine (Patrick Bauchau) and General Gogol (Walter Gotell). Singer-model Jones sports a wardrobe of far-out designs and a set of strike-you-dead facial expressions all of which causes the rest of the ladies to fade into the background. On Bond's side are Tibbett (Patrick Macnee), who provides a bit of amusing British class commentary; Chuck Lee (David Yip) as a CIA man RAMBO: First Blood Part II, directed by George P.

Cosmatos, produced by Buzz Feitshans, written by Sylvester Stallone and James Cameron, with Stallone, Richard Crenna, Charles Napier, Steven Berkoff, Julia Nickson, Martin Kove, George Kee Cheung, at the FLEUR and FORUM theater complexes. TriStar. (R: gross violence) lambo" is the kind of movie JLVthat prompts a reviewer to write plaintively: "Dear Editor What's wrong with me? How come I didn't react the way the 'Rambo' audience did? After 10,000 Bad Guys had been bombed, bazooka-ed and burned to kingdom come, the audience cheered! And three young-teen girls giggled through all of the killings, es- Bunke ofe-nej A VIEW TO A KILL, directed by John Glen, written by Richard Maibaum and Michael G. Wilson, produced by Wilson and Albert R. Broccoli, with Roger Moore, Christopher Walken, Patrick Mecnee, Grace Jones, Tanya Roberts, Fiona Fullerton, Lois Maxwell, Desmond Llewelyn, Robert Brown, Walter Gotell, David Yip, Patrick Bauchau and (who could resist listing her?) Papillon Soo Soo, at the RIVIERA.

MGMUA-Eon Productions Ltd. (PG: grott violence, sexual Innuendo) IN ANY OF the 14 James Bond movies, a moviegoer who dotes on fantasy but loathes violence gets a Plepse turn to Page 4 -r-.