The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 168

DH cinBini The triumph and tragedy of a wholesome pop star By Carrie Rickey INQUIRER MOVIECRITIC stoppable music of Selena Quintan-ilia Perez, played by Jennifer Lopez. Nava's film, executive-produced by Abraham Quintanilla, Selena's fa-See SELENA on Page 13 I he musician is the meteor of American culture. He burns bright, streaks through the heavens, then burns out. mt i l-r I "Selena," produced by the singer's father, celebrates her Mexican-ness and American-ness, but its ending is unresolved. Some legends, like Charlie Parker and Jim Morrison, fly too high and overdose.

Others think of Buddy Holly and Patsy Cline are modern variants of Icarus: They fly too close to the sun and their planes crash. Then there is the heart-wrenching case of Selena, the Tex-Mex pop star who at 23 was on the verge of crossover celebrity when her best friend and business manager fatally shot her in 1995. A bubbly brunette who looked improbably wholesome in spandex, Selena combined the vivaciousness of a cheerleader with fhe soulfulness of John Lennon. That's exactly the balance writerdirector Gregory Nava strikes in Selena, his lovely valentine to the brief life and un Review: Film SELENA Produced by Moctesuma Esparza and Robert Katz, written and di-' rected by Gregory Nava, photography by Edward Lachman, music by Dave Grusin, distributed by Warner Brothers. Running time: Selena Jennifer Lopez Abraham Edward James Olmos Marcela Constance Marie Chris Jon Seda Young Selena Becky Lee Meza Parent's guide: PG (adult themes) Showing at area theaters Jennifer Lopez personifies girlish high hopes as she lip-synchs and bops her way through the title role in "Selena." A lawyer doomed to speak the truth for 24 hours Jim Carrey, in "Liar Liar," returns to the form that made him a box-office sensation.

4 i- Review: Film LIAR LIAR 1 Produced by Brian Grazer, directed by Tom Shadyac, written by Paul Guay and Stephen Mazur, photography by Russell Boyd, music by James Newton Howard, distributed by Universal Pictures, Running time: 1:27 Fletcher Reede Jim Carrey Audrey Reede Maura Tierney Max Reed Justin Cooper Jerry Cary Elwes Samantha Cole Jennifer Tilly Parent's guide: PG-13 (vulgarity) Showing at area theaters 1 5 i -ak few intwa paved the way for Liar Liar, in which Jim Carrey plays a lawyer placed in an untenable professional predicament: for 24 hours, he must tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Since Carrey's Fletcher Reede wouldn't know the truth if he tripped over it in his Gucci loafers, his life is soon a disaster area. The sequence in Liar Liar that will surely survive long after the rest of the antic and spasmodically funny comedy has been forgotten puts a lawyer back in the bathroom. Carrey flees to a courthouse men's room to avoid doing the unthinkable actually telling the truth in an expensive and bitter divorce case. Careening off the walls and floor, Carrey beats himself up with everything available, from cracked mirrors to toilet seats.

The non-lawyers among us will enjoy Carrey's return to form in more congenial material after the darkly perverse The Cable Guy. Bob Hope filmed the same pliant comic idea in Nothing but the Truth, in which he played a stockbroker who cannot tell a lie. Today, the premise has such topicality and potential (imagine Johnnie Cochran and Mark Fuhr-man in such a plight) that you watch Carrey's broad physical Jim Carrey's Fletcher Reede with Jennifer Tilly) is aghast when he cannot tell a lie. By Desmond Ryan INQUIRER MOVIECRITIC he legal profession might have felt with some justice that its long and relentlessly dismal screen image bottomed Los Angeles law firm where he is the coming man. He thinks he has the case in brazenly lying his way to a multimillion settlement for a wife who has violated a prenup-tial agreement by sleeping around.

Fletcher himself is divorced and a workaholic whose case load is more important to him than his 5-year-old son. He constantly puts off the lad with lame excuses and fibs. In an act of unwitting fantasy, the kid wishes that his father would tell nothing but the truth for a day. The fulfillment of the wish, of course, means professional suicide for Fletcher not to mention the trail of wounded feelings that his sudden attack of honesty creates among lovers, exes, coworkers and judges. Carrey has his moments, notably in his courtroom scenes, and Liar Liar is the kind of shrewd choice that should bring back the box office figures to which he has become accustomed.

For their part, lawyers, can take heart. After Jurassic Park and Liar Liar, they have nowhere to go but up. In the movies, anyway. spin with some disappointment. He's at his best, but surely there is a better movie here.

It doesn't help that every frame of Liar Liar has the kind of italicized direction and writing that refuses to allow the audience to form its own judgments. Tom Shadyac, who directed Carrey in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective and Eddie Murphy in The Nutty Professor, here reverts to by-the-numbers filmmaking. Carrey's Fletcher Reede is only-one big legal victory away from making partner in the cutthroat out in Jurassic Park, when audiences cheered as T. Rex plucked a lawyer out of an outhouse and devoured him. Since then, the endless circus of the O.J.

trial has only increased public contempt for what goes on in so many courts. It has also Friday, March 21, 1997 THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER II.