The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 169

dh Screen The bimbo gets bravos in Woody Allen's latest By Steven Rea INQUIRER MOVIE CRITIC pinning a new variation on familiar themes love, guilt, angst and New York apartments too good to I be true Woody Allen's tight, ex-irpmelv likable Miehtv Aphrodite Review: Film MIGHTY APHRODITE Produced by Robert Greenhut, written and directed by Woody Allen, photography by Carlo DiPalma, music by vanous art-; isfs, distributed by Miramax Films. Running time: 1:38 Lenny Woody Allen Lmda Mira Sorvino Amanda. Helena Bonham Carter Jerry Bender Peter Weller Kevin Michael Rapaport Parent's guide: (sexual situations, profanity, adult themes) Showing at: Ritz Five There's trouble on the home front for the family played by (from left) Jimmy McQuaid, Woody Allen and Helena Bonham Carter. reaches back to ancient theatrical traditions: Watching over the romantic trials and tribulations of one modern-day Manhattan sportswriter named Lenny Weinrib (Allen) is a Greek chorus. Its members pace the dais of an amphitheater in their tunics and wreaths, dropping comments like, "You'd think once in a while they'd pick up the phone," or intoning dramatically, "Oh cursed fate! Some thoughts are better left unthunk!" They even kick up their heels and break into a verse or two of Cole Porter.

Lenny's particular plight is that he finds himself in a marriage where passion is on the wane. His wife, Amanda (Helena Bon-ham Carter), is increasingly occupied with her business (she's opening an art gallery downtown) and the aggressive come-ons of Jerry Bender, a smoothie gallery owner portrayed by Peter Weller. When Lenny and Amanda well, mostly Amanda decide to adopt a child, everything, of course, changes. And Allen's character, a rumpled bundle of neuroses in khaki and corduroy, goes on a quest for his bright and talented son's natural mother. Which leads us to Linda Ash, Mighty Aphrodite's brilliantly realized pivotal role.

A dumb blonde in the great tradition of Judy Holliday, Linda played to hilarious effect by Mira Sorvino is- a second-tier porno actress and hooker who lives in an East Side apartment decorated with X-rated tchotchkes and light fixtures that can only be described as phallus moderne. She teeters around in low-cut, high-heeled getups, delivers her lines in a Minnie Mouse squeak and, steals the movie with her guileless charm. Allen has long shown a knack for writing delightfully ditzy female characters Mia Farrow's gangland moll in Broadway Danny Rose, Jennifer Tilly's gangland moll in Bullets Over Broadway but Sorvino's may be his best yet. Her mix of wide-eyed naivete, unabashed sexuality and startlingly cheesy fashion sense is a wonder to behold, and the relationship that develops between Lenny and Linda Jias a comic tenderness that's truly touching. Mighty Aphrodite isn't quite up there with Bullets Over Broadway or Manhattan Murder she's thoroughly modern.

Weller brings an oily appeal to his adulterous art dealer. And late in the game, Michael Rapaport shows up as a bumpkin pugilist with an even dimmer intellect than Sorvino's call girl. When Lenny, playing matchmaker, tells Rapa-port's Kevin about Linda, he earnestly inquires: "Linda? Is that with a u-r, or an e-r?" The Greek chorus whose principals include F. Murray Abraham, Olympia Dukakis and a wonderfully grumpy Jack Warden as Tiresias, the blind seer of Thebes looks down on the fateful peregrinations of Lenny, Linda and company from its mythic roost. It's a fine, funny perspective.

Mystery in the latter-day Allen canon. Its writer-director-star, for one thing, is looking a little long in the tooth these days: Allen's closing in on 60, and while his nervous-ninnyisms and collegiate couture seem comfortably familiar, the slight jowliness in his worried face, and that really receding hairline don't. It's a little scary, and the contrast to the women in the film Carter and Sorvino, both easily half his age extreme. Allen has. peopled his latest lark with some great supporting players, though.

Carter, her hair cropped short and her English accent all but gone, segues from Merchant Ivory-land to Woody-town with aplomb Sigourney Weaver and Holly Hunter team to track a killer roles. Hudson, who has "20 years of clinical experience and serial kill Review: Film tfll By Steven Rea INQUIRER MOVIE CRITIC the opening minutes of Copycat, addressing a crowded university lecture hall on the subject of serial killers, famed forensic psy COPYCAT 4 -c -J Produced by Amon Milcharv and Mark Tarlov, directed by Jon Amiel, written by Ann Bider-man and David Madsen, photography by Laszlo Kovacs, music by Christopher Young, distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures. Running time: 2 03 Helen Hudson Sigourney Weaver M.J. Monahan Holly Hunter Ruben Goetz.

Dermot Mulroney Peter Foley William McNamara Daryll Lee Cullurn Harry Connick Jr. Parent's guide: (violence, sexual violence, profanity, nudity) Showing at: area theaters ers on the brain," has been reduced to shut-in status: The victim of a grisly attempted murder by a grinning, acne-scarred maniac (Harry Connick the criminal psychologist has suffered a nervous breakdown that's left her severely agoraphobic. She can't even summon up the courage to step outside her swanky San Francisco apartment into the hall. When a npwetwtnpr is lohhpd few feet from her front door, she has to rake it in with the end of a broom. Monahan, who wolfs down cheeseburgers and outshoots her male partner (Dermot Mulroney) on the target range, is a prickly, no-nonsense detective determined to track down the killer.

And since the killer is a brainiac who leaves no clues at the crime scene, M.J. is determined to bring Hudson and her expertise into the case. With her brisk manner and not-quite-suppressed Southern accent, Hunter has a lot of fun cajoling Weaver's nerve-wracked recluse into cooperating the actress even manages to inject some chologist Helen Hudson (Sigourney Weaver) observes that at any given time there are fewer than a dozen such psychos going about their business in the United States. In Hollywood, on the other hand, there seems to be a Kaznnon senai killers prowling the streets. And Copycat, an efficient suspenser that teams Weaver's Hudson with tough-cookie cop M.J.

Monahan (Holly Hunter), offers the kazil-lion-and-first. The challenge for the moviemakers, then, is to give their killer a gimmick, something to distinguish him (these folks are almost always male, our Dr. Hudson explains in that opening flashback) from all the other murderers stalking their prey on the big screen. In Seven, it's a warped genius who finds inspiration in the seven deadly sins. In Copycat, it's a nut-job whose methodology mimics tJL immit.

(tat nrnmnmmammtmmmmamiimimmiam In "Convcat." Sisoumev Weaver (left) plays a psychologist. charm into that nasal whine of hers. And Aliens uber-heroine Weaver, who isn't really playing against type here (she's been the traumatized victim before, most See COPYCAT on Page 14 Dermot Mulroney and Holly Hunter are with the police. the work of infamous serial killers San Francisco, home of many, of the recent past: Buono, Bianchi, many movies about cops and Bundv Berkowitz (hey, the killer crazed killers (see Jade if you must), is also nearly unique in its The film which takes place in pairing of two women in the lead THIS PHfljAjEJELPHJA.