Philadelphia Daily News from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 50

Friday, July 17, 1987 PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS page 50 -'I' e4 Snow White tends to dwarf pal Dopey in the classic Disney feature Dooooooo-dum, dooooooo-dum, SEQUEL GETS 2ZZZZ RATING "Jaws The Revenge," a thriller starring Lorraine Gary, Lance Quest, Mario Van Peebles, Karen Young and Michael Caine. Directed by Joseph Sargent, Screenplay by Michael de Guzman. Based on characters created by Peter Benchley. Running time; SS minutes. A Universal Pictures release.

At the AMC Orleans 8, Cottman Bustleton avenues. By RENEE V. LUCAS Daily News Staff Writer nyone who has been living a3 the planet for the last Mk eight years or so is already familiar with the basic plot of "Jaws The Revenge'." "Bruce" is back, and he is still one baaad shark. Bad enough to eat a boat. Bad enough to eat a small, undersea exploratory vehicle.

Bad enough to eat a plane. The only thing "Bruce" wasnt bad JJ dooodum, dooodum, doo dum, doo enough to eat, unfortunately, was this film, which is about as exciting as watching someone blow up a pair of water wings. Granted, you can do only so much with this fish' story. You know the beginning the shark kills people and you know the end the shark is killed so it's a matter of the filmmaker getting you through the middle, cleverly. Which is exactly where this one grinds to a halt.

In an effort to make the film more of a "people movie" rather than your average edge-of-your-seat hor-; ror flick about a monster that eats i people writer Michael de Guzman has gone overboard in the other di- rection, stripping the story of the oh-my-God kind of. tension and terror that sent us flocking to see "Jaws" in the first place. The movie is bogged down with family and other relationships, in- eluding a budding romance. It is fun to watch Ellen Brody (Lorraine Gary) and Hoagie (Michael Caine) kind of falling in love while her son Michael (Lance1 Guest) hovers and' 111 dum, doodumdoodum worries in the background. Fun, but not exciting.

Little Judith Barsi is cute as a button as Thea, Brody's precocious granddaughter. But "cute" is not exactly what you're looking for in a movie with the word in the title. The fact that you have to suspend your intelligence to even get through "Jaws The Revenge" doesn't help matters. Is a shark smart enough to follow a person from New York to the Bahamas? Considering that his brother got gobbled by a Great White, Michael's reaction to spotting one in his neck of the woods is pretty tame. After his daughter nearly ends up an hors d'oeuvre he manages to get a little more but just barely.

Jake (Van Peebles), Michael's marine biologist partner, is the closest we get to gung-ho, as far as the chase goes. Perhaps it's just as well that by the time the shark finally "got it," the members of the audience had already been lulled to sleep. Otherwise, they might have been the ones calling for White and her friendly animals cleaning up the dwarfs' abode (to the tune of "Whistle While You is a tour de force that will always be one of the classics of animation. Affecting in another way is the scene where the wicked stepmother falls to her death; the shot of two vultures slowly descending toward her reveals a grim conception of nature totally different from anything else in the film. And even those of us who prefer the goofy anarchy of Warner Brothers' Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck to the sweet, cute and too often treacly world according to Disney have to grant the frequent charm of this film.

True, the predominant aesthetic is the aesthetics of cute the dwarfs and the animals, who are on screen for most of the film, have the big heads and soft features that define that term. Equally true, the film often plays annoyingly like a civics lesson, on the virtues of patience, selflessness and personal hygiene. me see yur hands," says S.W. to the S.D.s, and then, after assessing the evidence: "March straight outside to wash, or you'll not get a bite to And, truest of all, compared to Snow White, saccharine would seem like cayenne pepper. But there's nothing criminal about any of this.

And you'd have to be a wicked stepmother not to- be charmed by the dwarfs, with their Rastafarian hats and adorable (My personal favorite is Sneezy, he of the tornado-like exhalations.) The music is good, too (remember "Someday, My Prince Will Come" and The upshot is that "Snow White" is still a great excursion for the kids. You might find yourself having a good time, too. Parental guide: Rated G. What else? STILL DOPEY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, an animated drama with the voices of Adriana Caselotti, Harry Stockwell and Lucille LaVerne. Supervising director: David Hand Running time: 83 minutes.

A Walt Disney re-release. At area theaters. By BEN YAGODA Daily News Movie Critic eviewing "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" is a little like reviewing Frank Ri2zo: both have been around for years, both will be around for years to come, some people like them, some people don and nothing anyone says will make much of a difference either way. But there are some things worth noting about the Disney version of 'the Grimm brothers' most famous fairy tale, which was re-released today to mark the 50th anniversary of its premiere in 1937. (Until then, no feature-length animated movie had ever been produced.) One is the cinematic achievement -of the team of animators and technicians assembled by Walt Disney to make the film.

Their use of light and shadows, their awareness of body language (have you ever tried differ- entiating seven dwarfs from each their sense of composition (the scene where the huntsman stands by, waiting to kill the unsuspecting Snow White, must be etched in the memory of anyone who's seen it) all must have been astounding at the time of the film's first release, and are still mighty impressive. The lengthy set piece of Snow.