Hartford Courant from Hartford, Connecticut • 26

BIO CENTRAL THE HARTFORD COURANT: Tuesday, September 30, 1980 jtefant jffimntf 'Hopscotch' Is Game, But Fails To Score 3 INTERSTATE 84 EXIT 58 SILVER LANE EAST HARTFORD 568-8810 BARGAIN MATINEE DAILY FIRST SHOW ONLY $2.50 CENTRAL. WOID QRAPHIC JAM "WILLIE PHIL' IS A RADIANT MOVIE." DIET EASY ACCESS TO ALL YOUR GRAPHICS NEEDS geous civilized Salzburg and her poshly furnished chateau with its richly stocked cellar. So once Miles is on the runit is goodbye Isobel, except for occasional long-distance calls that advance the plot only slightly, and do not exactly effervesce with the true spirit of romantic comedy. Dcwid Ansen Newswee i If you're into graphics you should be into CENTER CJ I Tfc2ArtKr 680-5383 I Li THE graphicist's supply place Old Windsor Ct BECAUSE IT'S HARD TO LOSE WEIGHT ALONE. FWJL MAZURSKYS I 95 5 cum twmitTn ctiumr Lb! 9 Lose 17 to 25 pounds in just 6 weeks! A.

CALL TODAY 3 II I on mufflers. MY-tt CENTER-J CENTER i 1 II' Donna Oilman, R.D. 9:15 1800 Siloi Deaie Hwf Saite 24, taky Hill 5294312 I I I a a i i i' I 9 9 ei I 1:307:15 NOT BUYING A NEW CAR? Cut Carl "THE INFLATION FIGHTERS" $C50 By MALCOLM L. JOHNSON IA-haters will have a wonderful time chortling at how ridiculous the agency is made to seem at the hands of Walter Matthau in "Hopscotch," while defenders of "the company" may well see the film as almost treasonable. Its political message aside, however, this spoof on spooks is a diverting, highly topical but an unmemorable comedy that is carried by a character actor who became a star and a stellar character actor.

Although Matthau has a co-star who shares top billing for "Hopscotch" no less a personage than Glenda Jackson the entire film revolves around his character's games with his fuming adversary. Matthau is cast as a consummate agent named Miles Kendig who becomes the scourge of his former employers after he is demoted to the filing section by his overweening section chief, detestably played by the admirable Ned Beatty. The film is therefore a sort of Tom-and-Jerry, Roadrunner-Wily Coyote affair in which Miles stays several jumps ahead of his pursuers (hence the film's title). Adapted by Brian Garfield and Bryan Forbes from Garfield's novel, "Hopscotch" begins with Matthau casually wandering about the fringes of Munich's Oktoberfest, fondling a motor-driven camera fitted with a tele-photo lens. In succession, he captures multiple shots of the passing of a pack of cigarettes from one young courier to -another and then to an older man, and in turn the first two are collared and taken into custody.

Kendig himself accosts the older man, one Mikhail Yas-kov as played with suave shrewdness by Herbert Lorn, and talks him into handing over the "cigarettes." But the Russian agent himself is allowed to walk away, and this is what lands Kendig in hot water with G.P. Myerson, the gung-ho, Commie-hating CIA bureaucrat whose office is decorated with targets with riddled bulls-eyes and photographs of himself with the likes of Nixon and Kissinger. Beatty makes Myerson loud and rabidly dogmatic, making us despise him immediately, while Matthau keeps Kendig as humorous and cool as a champion bassett hound. The battle is on, and Kendig is demoted to the filing section, where his first and only order of business is to shred his own dossier. Then he is off to Salzburg, where he takes up with a rich woman called Iso-bel von Schmidt, as played with confident archness by Glenda Jackson.

She serves mainly to inform us of Kendig's passion for Mozart and his heterosex-uality, though she also is the sounding board for the setting in motion of the cat-and-mouse game, which arises from Kendig's inspiration for his revenge. He decides that he will write his memoirs of years of dirty tricks and international intrigues and will send them, chapter by chapter, to the intelligence chiefs for all the major powers. Naturally, this makes Kendig a hunted man, which serves to remove Miss Jackson from the picture for most of the rest of its running time. Understandably, she is reluctant to leave gor SHAMPOO SET "3 PRECISION CUT 5 BLOW CRY '1250 2:157:20 I 9j40 I Ulf I With Miss Jackson all but out of the picture, the film hangs on the devices that Kendig employs to stay ahead of the arrayed forces of both Russian and U.S. intelligence.

There is nothing truly ingenious here, and neither the dialogue nor the direction of Ronajd Neame can be said to shimmer with style or wit. But the antagonism between Matthau and Beatty carries the film, and Kendig's chutzpah in hiding out in a house owned by Myerson has amusingly destructive consequences. "Hopscotch" also contains a nicely subdued portrait of a sympathetic young CIA agent by Sam Waterston, and the film is studded with some finely drawn little cameos by some of the people Miles Kendig meets in his peregrinations. But for all the territory the film covers, its location work is strangely unsatisfactory. Usually, a postcard-like establishing shot is lowed by a sequence that could have been, and probably was, shot on a British sound stage.

There is even one truly tatty shot, of an episode supposedly set in Washington, in which an obvious painting of the Capitol hangs hazily in the distance, At moments like this, "Hopscotch" stumbles, but Matthau's low-key, but playful characterization always gets it back on track again. The film's rating is based solely on one of its character's repeated use of a familiar four-letter word. Despite this rather needless characterization device, the film is suitable for older teenagers. "Hopscotch" is playing at Showcase Cinemas, East Hartford. Governments Group Wants Aid Approved The Connecticut Conference of Municipalities is calling on Congress to reauthorize federal general revenue sharing before it adjourns Thursday for the fall election campaign.

"Local governments have adopted their fiscal year 1980 1981 budgets with the expectation that general revenue sharing will continue, conference President Robert A. Johnson said in a letter to Connecticut's six congressmen. "Without prompt passage of the reauthorizing legislation, this major component of local government revenues would not be assured. This would cause great fiscal The revenue-sharing program provides nearly $60 million a year to Connecticut cities and towns. Authorization for the revenue sharing payments runs out today.

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