The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 38

"TV E4. THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER Wednesday, July 20, 1994 Picking the leading movie each week: Some box-office tallies don't add up I yi- yz AA' 1 C) VW A I 1 Ti il acknowledged in an interview that the film's gross was dishonest. The two "missing" theaters, said the person, who also spoke on condition his name not be used, were located "at Melrose and Gower" the location of the Paramount studio. The Gump numbers prompted an unusjial rebuke from Daily Variety box-office analyst Leonard Klady, who wrote: "The seesaw reporting is jeopardizing faith in the accuracy of the figures being released by the studios." The Lion King figures are impeachable, too. In a special "sneak preview" on July 9 and 10, Disney showed its new movie Angels in the Outfield in about 1,400 theater locations where The Lion King was play- MOVIES from E1 ments later, Disney said Lion King brought in $24,425,000 510,000 more than Gump, and just enough for a first-place finish.

Paramount then quickly countered, explaining that it had accidentally omitted theaters in San Francisco and New York that took in a combined $34,000: The real Gump gross was $24,450,000, the studio said. Barry London, Paramount distribution chief, said that while grosses involve some guesswork, the Gump proceeds were truthful. "We were accurate to the best of our knowledge at that time," he said. "We report the numbers as we get them." But a person close to Forrest Gump 1 1 iVA True Lies' shows its muscle Arnold Schwarzenegger and director James Cameron, who last collaborated on Terminator 2, have reunited to winning effect. True Lies, the super-expensive spy movie that also boasts Jamie Lee Curtis and Tom Arnold, enjoyed a whopping $25.9 million gross in its first three days, and bumped Forrest Gump from its week-long stay at the top of the charts.

But Gump still performed exceedingly well, as did Disney's The Lion King. The Disney studio's baseball fantasy Angels in the Outfield also opened to strong business. In the resort of Blackpool, Lalita Ahmed is charmed by Peter Cellier, playing an actor. "Bhaji on the Beach" tells of a day's outing by a group of Asian women from the British Midlands. Review: Film British Asian women take a trip in a film that's chock-full of stories ing.

Anybody who bought a ticket for Angels was counted as attending Lion King, even though he or she may have left before Simba's first song. Because of the attention national news organizations give them, the weekly box-office charts have become an integral element in Hollywood reporting. The weekend movie rankings are featured nationwide by TV and radio stations and many newspapers. Studios look upon favorable box-office stories as free movie ads. A TV station is likely to show a clip from the first-place film, and some moviegoers assume that if a film is popular, it must be good.

Box-office numbers reported Sunday morning are based on a polling of thousands of theaters by the independent service Entertainment Data Inc. The EDI survey covers about 70 percent of the nation's theaters, and obviously does not include Sunday afternoon and evening showings. The movie studios, mixing mathematical formulas with naked guesswork, extrapolate to arrive at a number. The figures reported about noon Monday are more accurate, since more theaters have been surveyed, but there's still room for fudging. One independent film company is notorious for waiting until all the other studios, report film grosses Monday before submitting its figures.

Those "final" figures are then compiled by Exhibitor Relations Co. which supplies them to news organizations, including the Associated Press. EDI's Phil Garfinkle said room for error and manipulation exists, but the box office reporting system "is probably more accurate than any reporting system on any consumer product out there." In what could have triggered another box-office dispute, Twentieth Century Fox opened Arnold Schwarzenegger's True Lies on Thursday, instead of the originally announced Friday date. The early debut gave the film a one-day jump-start over Forrest Gump, which Fox executives said the $120 million action movie needed to beat for a proper launch. As it turned out, True Lies did better than Gump during the Friday-through-Sunday period, negating the need for the ploy.

If Fox had counted Thursday, however, Paramount said last week that it would consider re-tallying its Gump figure to include Thursday as well. Last Total Weeks No. of Rank Title Studio weekend gross out locations 1. True Lies (20th Cent. Fox) $25.9 million $27.5 million VA 2,368 2.

Forrest Gump (Paramount) 24.1 million 72.1 million 2 2,014 3. The Lion King (Disney) 16.9 million 174.3 million 5 2,624 4. Angels in the Outfield (Disney) 8.9 million 8.9 million 1 1,894 5. Speed (20th Cent. Fox) 5.1 million 93.6 million 6 1,903 6.

1 Love Trouble (Disney) 3.4 million 23.1 million 3 1,633 7 Away(MGM) 2.5 million 23.8 million 3 1,862 (tie) The Shadow (Universal) 2.5 million 24.7 million 3 1,671 9. Wolf (Columbia) 2.1 million 59.5 million 5 1,752 10. The Flintstones (Universal) 1.4 million 119.5 million 8 1,298 SOURCE: Exhibitor Relations Co. Inc. i i ambitions and they ultimately do her in.

There's no way a film whose characters are painted in such broad strokes can support the melodrama she showers down on them. Bhaji on the Beach is at its best capturing the adoptive (and adaptive) lives of Britain's Asian community when it focuses on the everyday details: a storekeeper trying to clean neo-Nazi graffito from a window grate; a gang of abusive white Brits encountered in a motorway rest stop; the way Pushpa, who still wears the traditional sari, pours chili powder on her bland snack of chips. (The film's title refers to another snack, bhaji, a fritterlike food. Chadha uses it as a metaphor: something whose origins are Indian but whose identity has been shaped in Britain.) Boarding the minibus that will take the women to the tacky gray seaside resort, Simi, the expedition's leader, announces that "it's not often that we women get away from patriarchal demands made on us in our daily lives, struggling under the double yoke of racism and sexism." That Shaheen Khan, the actress who plays Simi, delivers this weighty proclamation with a smile on her face is part of Bhaji on the Beach's charm. Later, in a climactic scene shot in the shadowy sand beneath a Blackpool pier, the yoke of sexism gets the better of Simi and her sisters-inarms.

And the charm dissipates as a confrontation between Ginder and her estranged husband turns brutal and, alas, not terribly well Bhaji on the Beach Produced by Nadine Marsh-Edwards, directed by Gurinder Chadha, written by Meera Syal, photography by John Kenway, music by Craig Pruess, John Altman and Kuljit Bhamra, distributed by First Look Pictures. Running time: 1 hour, 39 mins. Ginder Kirn Vithana Ranjit Jimmi Harkishin Hashida Sarita Khajuria Oliver MoSesay Asha Lalita Ahmed Parent's guide: no MPAA rating (sexual themes, domestic violence, racial epithets, profanity) Showing at: Ritz Five headline reads: "They Curried My And there's Ladhu and Madhu, first-generation British teens who are out for a good time and find something like it in the company of a pair of redheaded fast-food workers who wear matching cowboy outfits. And that's not the half of it. For a while, Chadha, a documen-tarian making her first foray into feature films, manages to maintain an easygoing comedic tone, even as she examines some heavyweight subjects.

To this extent, Bhaji recalls David Attwood's Wild West (1993), a multiracial romp that followed a British Indian country-and-western band as its members cavorted, Beatles-style, through the streets of London. But Chadha, who mixes social realism (her filmmaking hero is Ken Loach) and fanciful farce, has bigger Come dance with the best teachers, build your confidence and ease, and just think of the fun. Come on Join the new season schedule. By Steven Rea INQUIRER MOVIE CRITIC There's so much going on in Bhaji on the Beach, a cross-generational, cross-cultural comedy from director Gurinder Chadha, that it's a wonder the thing doesn't fold in on itself. The story of a group of Asian women from the British Midlands who take a day-trip to the working-class resort of Blackpool, this mostly upbeat movie grapples with issues of racism, sexism, consumerism and community identity crises as reflected by its busload of characters' personal dilemmas.

There's Hashida, a brainy pre-med student who's carrying on a secret affair with an African British man and now finds herself pregnant and afraid to tell her Punjabi parents. There's Cinder, a young woman who has taken her son and fled her abusive husband, bringing humiliation to his family and disgrace on hers. There's Asha, the middle-aged wife of a Birmingham newsstand-video dealer, who succumbs to elaborate fantasies in which the Hindu god Rama glowers down amid the polyglot detritus of her husband's shop. (One tabloid "K9T TODAY SHOW "ENORMOUSLY ENTERTAINING!" -Michael Mtdved, NEW YORK POST W'I'BI'I HIBniHIK IMT9R9 IfillHW Mini; miuiiu mm mm hjki 4 "A FLAT-OUT WONDERFUL MOVIE!" UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU ShaM. NBC-TV, dene A Grisham film thriller goes beyond courtroom iiii.Briatm-iiraui turn NOW SHOWING at these Selected I i I-f i I Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival MAGICAL CHILDREN'S THEATRE! ALADDIN WEO-SAT.

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21, 22, 23-8pm Foundation Theatre in residence at Burlington County College Pemberton, NJ 08068 Call (609) 894-2138 for reservation. CLIENT from E1 who is missing and presumed dead. Naturally, the police and Roy Fol-trigg (Tommy Lee Jones) a high-powered federal prosecutor whose road to the governor's office leads through the courtroom that will try the senator's sensational murder case want the information. But even at his tender age, Mark is smart enough to realize that to share the secret is to invite the vengeance of the Mafia hit man behind the politician's murder. In effect, The Client is a clever and pliant variation on the classic Hitchcock situation that puts a kid, instead of an adult, between the authorities and villainous criminals.

Mark makes a more interesting and sympathetic protagonist than either Tom Cruise in The Firm or Julia Roberts in The Pelican Brief. Grisham's story is further enriched by Reggie Love (Susan Sarandon), a lawyer who agrees to represent Mark and a woman who has lost custody of her children in an unfair divorce settlement. As the peril mounts, Mark and Love set out for New Orleans to confirm the whereabouts of the corpse and thus acquire a trump card in a very dangerous game. In his most effective outing as a director, Schumacher handles the suspense securely and, more importantly, creates room for an excellent cast to bring out the movie's subtext. Even though he is making movies at a workaholic pace, Jones remains incapable of a trite or jaded performance.

His Foltrigg is a delightful piece of upscale sleaze, a media-savvy climber who knows he's a hypocrite but can point to the sham in the entire political process. Sarandon focuses on Love's sense of loss at being kept from her natural children and her growing maternal feelings for Mark. In the end, the senator is the victim of the Mafia and Mark a victim of our judicial system. It places him in great jeopardy even though he has committed no crime. And that is the real crime that The Client examines so perceptively.

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Running time: 2 hours, 3.mins. Reggie Love Susan Sarandon Roy Foltrigg Tommy Lee Jones Mark Sway Brad Refifro Dianne Sway Mary-Louise Parker Barry Muldano Anthony LaPaglia Parent's guide: PG-13 (violence, profanity) Showing at: area theaters Don't Miss The moat popular Greek Comedy LYSISTRATA by Aristophanes Every Thursday Saturday at 8 PM; Sundays at 2 PM Minutes from Center City: Near Septa R3 HEDGEROW THEATRE 64 Rot Vslly Road Rom Valley, PA 610565-4211.