St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 37

the new movies 1982 5D SILDUIS POST-DISPATCH' Much of the Brazilian city of Sao Paolo is a teeming slum. Families Hve' -in hovels not much larger than packing cases, without running water or proper sanitary facilities. Large families are common; chil-' By Joe Pollack Of th PMt-Dipatch Staff A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy' The plot line is old enough to be tripping on its whiskers, with shades of many movies, plays and books all involved in Woody Allen's new project, "A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy." Allen provides no background, no detail. All we know about each of them obvious in the first few lines, and tiling more is revealed. This makes easy writing, but keeps the viewer at arm's length or farther.

Gordon Willis, Allen's long-time cinematographer, makes magic with most of his work, and the soft lighting of summer evenings casts a beautiful glow. The music, all familiar and all by Felix Mendelssohn, is effective. The performers work well, too, especially Ferrer and Farrow. Steenburgen seems to lack some of the glow she has shown in earlier films. Hagerty doesn't have much to do, but she does it extremely well.

But, in the final analysis, a disappointment. (Running time: 1 hour, 25 minutes. Rating, PC At the Cave Springs, Esquire, Jamestown, Northwest Plaza, Sunset, Woods Mill) 'Young Doctors in Love' The slam-bang school of comedy remains alive and pretty well in "Young Doctors in Love," a mixture of good sight gags, pretty good one-liners and an inane plot, which seems to be the standard for Mrs. Brisby's late husband had helped the rats escape, which makes them willing to offer assistance to her in the moving process. At the same time, they are having their own political problems, which culminate In an exciting sword battle.

The rats may be technically advanced, but sword play looks better in animation. For comic relief, there's Jeremy, the crow, with Dom DeLuise as the voice, and it's a bright, endearing character. He wants to be a ladies' man, but he's as fine a klutz as ever has been created. I wish there had been more of him, and perhaps some cohorts, and less of the impending gloom and doom intoned by Hermione Baddeley as a busybody shrew. Elizabeth Hartman is the voice of Mrs.

Brisby, John Carradine the owl and Derek Jacob, the leader of the rats. All are fine. The animation is excellent, but I wonder about the overall tone of the film. It ends happily, but along the way there is so much reference to illness, tragedy, grief, pain and other depressing subjects that it bothered me. I also wonder how much small children will understand, or how much will frighten them, even with the rating.

And at the same time, it seems too simplistic for older children. (Running time: 1 hour, 22 minutes. Rating, G. At the Alton, Des Peres, Ellisville, Halls Ferry) dren, without 1 proper care or run! the street in criminal packs. is a'v small boy, 8 or 10- years old.

And the Brazilian film of the same name, written and directed' by Hector Babenco, is a savage social statement about the boys's future and that of millions of his peers. It's a fictional tale, obviously based on truth i and it's one of the strongest, but most depressing films of recent years. Babenco goes too long, trying to pile- one powerful sequence atop and eventually one just blanks out any. more of the horrors that face this child. But there are American children just like Pixote, and that's the greatest horror of all.

1 thrown in with older boys of various chinm rathor ara nhira 1 1 anH Vmvti rai (jiuievuun iu avuiu ii. uirgei uuya uuiiy smaller ones, but all live under the "no one squeals" code of that or any other I 1 See THE NEW MOVIES, Page 7 i shows his latest gadget to Mary in "A Midsummer Night's Sex Woody Allen, a part-time inventor, Steenburgen, who plays his wife Comedy." hospital pathologist, and Pamela Reed is wonderful as Nurse Sprocket. Kimberly McArthur has a brief part, but is easy to remember. She works in the hospital gift shop and causes considerable consternation in the operating room on at least one occasion. Dabney Coleman overacts a lot, and director Garry Marshall seems to keep everything in some sort of order.

The two plots stagger along, but the fun occurs in between, when there's a chance for either verbal or physical one-liners, like the bed under repair or the continual surprises over what is inside the i.v. bottles every time there's a closeup. At those moments, everything brightens considerably. It's a very silly movie, with the rating obviously caused by some nudity and a lot of bad language, but it has its moments and provides some pleasant, mindless entertainment while trying to escape the heat in an air-conditioned theater. (Running time: 1 hour, 33 minutes.

Rating, R. At the Chesterfield, Cinema IV, Crestwood, Esquire, Halls Ferry, Northwest Plaza, South County) The Secret of NIMH' Don Bluth and 16 of his colleagues all animators and artists for Walt Disney broke away from the big studio a few years ago and announced they were going to make movies in the old spirit of Disney. "The Secret of NIMH" is exactly that. It's a' fairy tale about animals, with some strange, modern, socio-political overtones. It offers The problem is that with all that material to draw from, Allen should have come up with something brighter, funnier and less draggy.

It's a shame, because I'm a longtime fan of Allen's many talents, and he has surrounded himself with excellent performers, all of whom bring as much out of the material as they possibly can. The group includes Tony Roberts, Mary Steenburgen, Jose Ferrer, Mia Farrow and Julie Hagerty. Set in the days just before World War or thereabouts, the film places six people at the summer home that belongs to Allen and his wife, Steenburgen. Allen works on Wall Street, and spends his spare time as a zany inventor of things that don't work. Ferrer and Farrow, about to be married, are visiting for the weekend.

He's a pompous philosophy professor and distant relative of Steenburgen; she's a flighty young thing who has apparently visited most of the bedrooms in the civilized world and once had an brief, platonic fling with Allen. Roberts is Allen's best friend, as usual. He's a priapic physician who has brought Hagerty, his young nurse, to take care of his libido. For women of the '80s, they could be considered sexually liberated; when you think of 70 years ago, it's difficult to comprehend. Of course, this could be part of Allen's comic planning, but it doesn't quite come off.

Allen and Steenburgen are having a few marital problems of their own, and the arrival of Farrow doesn't help. Things get more complex when Roberts is totally smitten by Farrow and she seems ready to cooperate, though she can't decide between him and Allen. At the same time, Ferrer decides he needs a last fling before marriage and Hagerty is not only ready, willing and able, but extremely eager. But given an Allen film, there's a lot more discussion than there is action, and there are times when the discussion is disjointed, even disconcerting to the point of confusion. There are many good lines, most of them subtle and understated, but the wait between them is almost interminable.

As an example, Allen describes his most recent invention as "something to take the bones out of fish or, if you should want to, to put the bones back in." And the characters are not developed past the point of caricature. beautiful art work and animation and the usual proportions of some animals who are clever, some who are wise, some who are industrious and one who is a clown. Parts of it are rather scary, in the tradition of the Brothers Grimm and "Bambi" or "Dumbo." NIMH, by the way, stands for the National Institute of Mental Health which, believe it or not, is the villain of the film. The movie is based on Robert C. O'Brien's book, "Mrs.

Frisby and the Rats of NIMH," winner of the 1972 Newberry Award for children's literature. For some unexplained reason, the name of the leading mouse has been changed to Mrs. Brisby, perhaps to avoid confusion with the flying pie plate. Mrs. Brisby, recently widowed, is trying to rear three small mice-children on a small farm.

One of them becomes ill and at the same time, spring arrives, which means that the animals have to move before Farmer Fitzgibbons' plow tears up their homes and threatens their lives. Little Timmy, however, is too ill to walk. She gets medicine from the wise mouse, Mr. Ages, and advice from the even-wiser owl. He tells her to get help from the rats, who live under a rose bush in Fitzgibbons' front yard, where the mean cat.

Dragon, also hangs out. These are not ordinary rats; they have escaped from the NIMH laboratories, where they were experimental animals, and the test medicines with which they were injected have given them enough wisdom to learn how to read, write and use electricity, which they steal from the farmer. A flashback to the lab shows painful testing of animals, and the film makes a strong, if brief, anti-vivisection statement. Read the tale of Jimmy Driftwood, a living Ozark legend. And a report on the progress building the Vandeventer Overpass.

in PD Magazine. hekrise DEAR HELOISE: The aluminum pot I constantly boiled water in had become very dark on the Inside. Remembering your hint about cream of tartar cleaning aluminum, I mixed about three tablespoons to. a quart of water and filled the pan with the solution. After boiling for a few minutes, the discoloration on the pan disappeared.

E.H. DEAR HELOISE: Before wearing a new earment. touch the cen ST. ter of each button wfth transparent fingernail polish. This will seal the threads and the buttons will stay on longer.

Nurse 1 in All ALL SEATS RHS nt films of this genre. We follow a group of interns for a year in a hospital and through a pair of parallel stories. One involves the romance of two of the doctors; the other deals with a gang leader who suffers an apparent stroke. There's a contract out on him and a hit-man in the hospital; in addition, the big man's son dons female garb for visiting purposes and attracts one of the young physicians. All the usual diversions are present lustful doctors and nurses, dumb doctors and nurses, a pair of candy-stripers who dance down the halls, a hooker who wears roller skates, a chief of staff more interested in his investments than anything else, a secretary in toe shoes, a doctor whose goal is the key to the drug locker, and so on, and so on, and so on.

Michael McKean and Sean Young are the title characters; he's an officious young man who is apparently a medical genius but not too quick in some other areas. She's pretty. Enough said. Hector Elizondo is a standout as AngeloAngela, who uses at least one vulgarity in every sentence. There's never any question of his sex, except in the mind of Patrick Collins, and Elizondo is a delight.

Harry Dean Stanton is first-rate as the alcoholic -SO fO T3 3 (8 i LOUIS POST-DISPATCH $1.50 (To Capodty) RUSH HOUR SHOWS ONLY to thowtfcnt Indkof RUSH HOUR SHOW MOVIE INFORMATION Call 822-4900 Daily 1 2:00 To 9:00 M. BARGAIN MATINEE Mon. Thru Sat. Until RHS Except Sun. Holidays tHTl2ffiJtSWHELmraM: OMw St.

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