The Palm Beach Post from West Palm Beach, Florida • Page 85

MOVIE NOTES Bond violence gets artistic 'Licence' j-f "7 I I i vi i I 1 .11 i mm i 4 iJ Jf 1 "IMIttWI.ITOCTrw i j- i -w i A Los Angeles Times News Service Lots of critics took shots at the latest James Bond picture, Licence to Kill, for its violence. We counted some 22 visibly dead on screen, some in pretty gruesome fashion. There is death by electric eel, shark and hungry maggots. One bad guy is decompressurized. Another is sent via conveyor belt to some sharp-edged machinery.

There is an impaling and an incineration, along with your more traditional shootings, stranglings and falls from planes. So how did all this manage a PG-13? Richard Heffner, chairman of the MPAA ratings board, would only respond: "The rating reflects the majority opinion of the board Our decisions aren't made by doing a body count." By the way, Heffner said, it has been an "established tradition" for United Artists to fly several MPAA board members first class to London to view and rate the Bond films. But this year, they saw Licence to Kill in the States. Meanwhile, Licence to Kill is out as a graphic novel. But don't look for Timothy Dalton as a new comic book character.

The English star known before Bond for more dignified roles has refused to allow his likeness to be licensed in the just-out book from Eclipse Comics. Tribute to Mel Blanc When Warner Bros, bought double-truck ads (two facing pages) in both Daily Variety and the Hollywood Reporter July 13, it was merely to pay tribute to the late Mel Blanc, "the man of a thousand voices," who died July 10. But due to a "tremendous response," said Kathleen Helppie, Warners animation vice president, the studio ran an extra hundred copies and is now printing more for Warners executives and others "who were so touched" by the tribute. The color illustration pictured such famous Warner Bros, cartoon characters as Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig and Daffy Duck whose voices Blanc created bowing their heads before a microphone standing alone in a spotlight. Helppie called it an "animation department effort" executed by artists Darrell Van Citters and Chris Buck.

Daily Variety got calls requesting unstapled copies for framing. The Reporter received similar inquiries and "pretty much sold out" of the issue, said Lynne Segall, director of marketing and sales. Studio wants Clancy's upcoming book, too While Paramount shoots Red October, the studio is also negotiating for film rights to author Tom Clancy's next techno-thriller, Clear and Present Danger, due out Aug. 17 from G.P. Putnam and Sons.

The book drew a pre-publication rave from Publishefs Weekly, which called it "the author's best work since The Hunt for Red October." With her mother in danger, Celeste asks King Babar for his help in the animated film 'Babar: The 'Babar' good, clean fun Animated bedtime story will appeal more to children MOVIE REVIEW BABAR: THE MOVIE CREDITS: With the voices of Gordon Pin-sent, Gavin Magrath, Elizabeth Hanna, Sarah Polley, John Stacker and Charles Kerr. Directed by Alan Bunce. Screenplay by Bunch, Peter Sauder, J.D. Smith, John de Klein and Raymond Jafelk. 75 minutes.

Animated. RATED NOW PLAYING: Movies At Boynton Beach, Movies At Town Center, Shadowood 12, Coral Square Cinema 8, Deerfield Mall Cinema 8, Movies At Pom-pano VI. Movies are evaluated on a star system: excellent good fair poor No stars denotes a bomb bar (the voice of Gordon Pinsent) has just finished presiding over Elephant-land's annual Victory Parade. When it's time to tuck his four children into bed, they demand that their father tell them a story. The king's tale leads into a long flashback that explains how the Victory Parade came about.

As a young elephant, King Babar is called on to defend his territory against the ruthless Rataxes (Charles Kerr), the barbarous leader of Rhino City. With the help of the playful monkey Zephir (John Stocker) and his future bride, Celeste (Sarah Polley), the young Babar (Gavin Magrath) defies the odds and defeats Rataxes. The story is as simple as that. There are a few adventures along the way, of course, including a close call with crocodiles and an incident involving a rickety bridge swinging over a river gorge. Most of the excitement comes when Babar, Celeste and Zephir infiltrate Rhino City and tangle with Rataxes and his uncouth, ill-tempered henchmen.

It's all good clean fun, especially for children (adults may get bored with the bare-bones story). There's some violence, but it's, well, cartoonish violence nobody gets maimed or killed, as far as I can tell, and the villains are. funny enough to keep them from being truly frightening. Forget the silly Saturday morning cartoons this week and take your kids to see Babar. By MICHAEL MILLS Palm Beach Post Staff Writer Somehow or another I managed to grow up without reading any of the three dozen or so children's books about Babar, an orphaned elephant who became a king.

Now I'm sorry to have missed them, because to judge from the animated Babar: The Movie, the stories must be enchanting. A Frenchwoman, Cecile de Brun-hoff, invented Babar for a bedtime story for her children in the early 30s. Her husband, Jean, built 12 books around the character. One of their sons, Laurent, has continued the tradition with more than two dozen additional titles. Babar, a Canadian-French co-production, isn't the sort of crisp, immaculate animation you find in the Walt Disney classics.

The drawing is very simple, very stylized a few graceful lines and some clumps of gray are shaped not so much into likenesses of elephants as into suggestions of them. Small dots pass for eyes. An extended portion of a face indicates the versatile trunk. 1. Lethal Weapon 2 Warner $13 million, 1,830 screens, $7,1 16 per screen, $71.6 million, three weeks.

2. Batman Warner $11.2 million, 2,201 screens, $5,072 per screen, $187.5 million, five weeks. 3. When Harry Met Sally Columbia, $8.8 million, 775 screens, $1 1,415 per screen, $12.1 million, two weeks. 4.

Honey, I Shrunk the Kids Disney, $6.4 million, 1 ,498 screens, $4,294 per screen, $87 million, five weeks. 5. Licence to Kill MGM-UA, $5.1 million, 1,587 screens, $3,2 1 4 per screen, 1 8. 1 million, two weeks. 6.

Peter Pan Disney, $4.3 million, 1,533 screens, $2,837 per screen, $14.3 million, two weeks. 7. Dead Poets Society Disney, $3.5 million, 1,062 screens, $3,340 per screen, $70 million, eight weeks. 8. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade Paramount, $3.4 million, 1,523 screens, $2,221 per screen, $172.1 million, nine weeks.

9. Ghostbusters II Columbia, $2.9 million, 1,758 screens, $1,640 per screen, $98.5 million, six weeks. 10. Weekend at Bernle's 20th Century Fox, $2.7 million, 1, 104 screens, $2,454 per screen, 18 million, three weeks. The sets and background are more elaborately rendered.

Babar's kingdom, Elephantland, is a sprawling fortified community surrounded by smaller elephant villages, and the colorful architecture is dominated by elephant motifs. The great jungle beyond is an even more impressive tangle of shapes and colors. In an echo of Babar's bedtime-story origins, the narrative is itself a bedtime story. The grown-up King Ba Page 4 The Palm Beach Post -JULY 28, 1989 TGIF.