Tampa Bay Times from St. Petersburg, Florida • 76

ON SCREENMOVIES t-f MPUBUFEMT REGATTA June 25th and 26th, 1994 Saturday: 10 am to 5 pm Sunday: Noon to 5 pm LAKE MAGGIORE PARK 9TH STREET AND 38TH AVENUE SOUTH ST. PETERSBURG, FLORIDA Admission: Adults: $5.00 Children $3.00 per day Racing, Exhibits, Demonstrations, Food Refreshments Proceeds To: Muscular Dystrophy Association 1 7 AT AMC THIRI II A DIFHMNCU WI FIESH IN PURI CANOLA OIL 4 AT Kill SEMINOLE 8 38aW2WTM8tiimoutia WOLF (R) it UON KING (G) if WYATT EARP (PG-13) SPEED (R) RENAISSANCE MAN (PG-13) GETTING EVEN WITH DAD (PG) Warner Bros. THE FUNTSTONES IPG) EARP EPIC: Gene Hackman (right) is Nicholas Earp to Kevin Costner's Wyatt. CITY SLICKERS 2 (PG-13) TRI'CITY 8 531-2882 tm BAY OK U.t. It if WYATT EARP LION KING WOLF If you're going to devote three hours to a movie, you want some action, you want some conflict, you want some story.

You don't want an uninspired Wyatt Earp. THE FUNTSTONES (PG-13) (G) (R) (PG) (PG-13) (PG-13) (PG) (R) tSiDnDs nreaiDeir saga CITY SUCKERS 2 RENAISSANCE MAN GETTING EVEN WITH DAD SPEED CROSSROADS 8 A MOVIE REVIEW 3473379 WTH 1 22MD AVE. Wyatt Earp Grade: UON KING (G) WOLF (R) WYATT EARP (PG-13) SPEED (R) Director Lawrence Kasdan Cast: Kevin Costner, Dennis Quaid, Gene Hackman, Michael Madsen, Bill Pullman, Mare Winningham, Screenplay: Dan Gordon and Lawrence Kasdan Rating: PG-13; violence, profanity, sexual situations, brief nudity Running time: 182 min. MAVERICK (PG) GETTING EVEN WITH DAD (PG) CITY SLICKERS 2 (PG-13) RENAISSANCE MAN (PG-13) By STEVE PERSALL Times Rim Critic TVDftuc cm I A DP ft 347 (G) (PG-13) UON KING WYATT EARP WOLF THE FUNTSTONES CITY SUCKERS 2 SPEED (R) (PG) (PG-13) (R) most simpleminded. When the role calls for Earp's cold-hearted descent into violence, Costner mostly adopts an unconvincing steely gaze or a rage that isn't intimidating.

There may be inner demons to explore in Earp's personality, but Costner is either unqualified or too self-conscious to do it Hardly the sort of performance that keeps one riveted for three hours. Neither is the storyline, which opens with a teasing glimpse of the moments before Earp, his brothers and Doc HoDiday slapped leather with the Clanton gang in Tombstone. Nope, if a setup for one long flashback, beginning with the teenage Wyatt trying to run away from his native Iowa cornfields to enlist in the Civil War. Stern father Nicholas Earp (dependable Gene Hack-man) is shown teaching his son the value of the law and, especially, the family a tooobvious influence on Earp's adult life as a marshal with two brothers as deputies. Before we get to that familiar material, Kasdan and co-writer Dan Gordon feel obliged to give us Earp's unexciting job resume, with dashes of failed romance and a growing fascination with firearms.

In jarring, episodic fashion, we see Earp employed as a stagecoach driver, buffalo hunter, card dealer and, finally, a deputy. If like watching Little Big Man, without the spark of young Dustin Hoffman or the ingenuity of a well-told tall tale. An hour passes before we step into the streets of Dodge City, where Earp's reputation as a no-nonsense cop began, then got him fired and rehired. Then if on to Tombstone, more arrests and the O.K. Corral scene, which may be true-to-life, but not thrilling.

Wyatt Earp winds up as a standard revenge story, with popup villains Kasdan barely takes time to define and a decreasing number of Earps. Kasdan needs three hours to cover this terrain, then sums up Earp's last 47 years which might make an mtriguing or at least fresh movie about life as a legend in a footnote. Before that, Wyatt Earp does little but invite comparison with Tombstone. Fair enough, since Costner reportedly tried to use his Hollywood clout to squelch that competition during pre-production. Tombstone wasn't a good movie (although if better on video), but at least it was rambunctious in its shortcomings.

Sloppy? Yes. Campy? Absolutely, especially in the wickedly fey portrayal of Earp's buddy Doc HoDiday by Val Kilmer. But at feast it moved, with spasms of genuine action and little romance. Costner's version is more capable and boasts bigger stars, but I'd rather sit through Tombstone twice than Wyatt Earp again. Costner obviously planned Wyatt Earp to be another Dances with Wolves, but that film had the intelligence to show us Americans Indians in a new light, not the same old cowboys.

There's a good idea for a movie here, but if Doc Holli-day story, somewhere between Kilmer's irreverence and Dennis Quaid's subdued, scene-stealing performance. The best part of Wyatt Earp is Quaid's death-rattle drawl as the tubercular gunslinger. The rest of the movie just creaks. COUNTRYSIDE MALL 6 One prerequisite for making a three-hour epic about someone's life should be that the subject led an interesting life. Fabled lawman Wyatt Earp apparently didn't, except for that messy business in Dodge City and the O.K.

Corral the same legendary showdowns we've seen time and again from My Dariing Clementine in 1946 to Tombstone just six months ago. That didn't stop co-producers Kevin Costner and Lawrence Kasdan from dusting off Earp's slim biography and giving it the old Dr. Zhivago treatment a Western that sprawls so wide it winds up flat on its face. Wyatt Earp is a frontier saga that needs a good giddy-up to spur it along. Costner straps on Earp's six-shooters, but the same ordinary-guy qualities that made him a box office star don't suit the legend, or the dose of realism directorco-writer Kasdan attempts to inject here.

With his weak chin and flat delivery, Costner seems as out-of-place in this action as his Eliot Ness was in The Untouchables. In Earp's younger days, Costner appears eagerly meek, al UON KING it WYATT EARP SPEED CITY SUCKERS 2 THE COWBOY WAY (G) (PG-13) (R) (PG-13) (PG-13) CLEARWATER 5 it LION KING (G) it WOLF (R MAVERICK (PG THE FUNTSTONES PG GETTING EVEN WITH DAD PG SPEED (R 8 TIMES FRIDAY, JUNE 24,1994.