Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • 191

Chicago Tribune, Friday, November 29, 1991 Section 7 Friday Siskd's Flicks Picks By Gene Siskel 4, i I -A Tor the Boys' on a show-biz shines light odd couple ur Flick of the Week is "For the Boys," a corny but effective show-biz melodrama that is undone only in its final scenes by a laughable makeup job that ages co-stars Bette Midler and James Caan. They look like reptiles. i i i ill- Mi Kristy McNichol, with director Samuel Fuller, stars in "White Dog." eo9i fnfim 0 oLJilb Before that, "For the Boys" spans five decades and three wars in the saga of two feuding entertainers who are bitter apart and bitter together. Caan plays a patriotic singer who is forced by his handlers to accept wisecracking singer Midler into his USO act. The tear-jerking patriotism couldn't be more manipulative as songs are intercut with dogface soldiers, but what recommends "For the Boys" is its behind-the-scenes savvy about entertainment odd couples.

More often than not, one member of a team feels as though he or she could have made it just as big without the other. In this case it's Caan's character, who is in a headlong dash toward loneliness. This is smart casting given Caan's well-known real-life self-destructive impulses. His buried anger is right there all the time. As for Midler, she plays a charismatic little duck with a big voice, and the role fits her perfectly.

Now, about that makeup job. You really have to blame director Mark Rydcll for accepting the heavy, evenly spaced liver spots applied to Caan's kisser. He looks like he's wearing wallpaper. It's not easy to recommend a film that concludes with unintended laughter. But "For the Boys" has sizable heart and sass.

It's playing at the McClurg Court, Webster Place and outlying theaters. R. Flicks Picks guide at last dreamlike and disturbing images). The dog, it develops, is a "white dog, an animal that has been trained since birth to fear and attack black skin. The snarling dog, its white fur stained with bright red stage blood, becomes a typically imposing, outscale Fuller image the embodiment of snarling, irrational and implacable hatred.

Typical, too, is the way Fuller emphasizes the radical contrast between the dog in its innocent, unaroused state big brown eyes staring up at McNichol and its plunging, salivating attack mode. Fuller is the cineaste of wild extremes, the poet of polar oppositcs, reveling abrupt reversals and blatant paradoxes. Julie takes the dog to a Hollywood animal trainer (Burl Ives) who suggests that the creature is beyond redemption and should be shot. But reforming a white dog turns out to be the lifetime obsesson of the trainer's partner, Keys (Paul Winfield). If the dog can be reconditioned, Keys believes, it will be proof that racism is an illness with an antidote.

He takes the animal in charge and, donning a protective leather suit, begins to work with him in a huge, arenalike cage, exposing a bit more skin to the snarling beast animal each time he takes him out of his cage. "White Dog" does not have the density of such Fuller classics as "Shock Corridor" (1963) and "The Naked Kiss" (1964) unbelievably lurid melodramas so overstuffed with bizarre details that they seem like Sears catalogs of American neuroses. Instead, the film feels, at least by Fuller standards, fairly clean and uncluttered, with a single, concentrated line of development mounting toward a single, crushingly pessimistic moral in- Spo 'White Dog', page Dog1 has its day Dave Kchr "White Dog" V2 Directed by 8amuel Fuller (1981); written by Fullr and Curtia Hanson; photographed by Bruce SurtMe; edited by Bernard Gobble; production designed by Brian EatweU; music by Ennto Morricone; produced by Jon Davison. A Paramount release; opena Nov. 29 at the Music Bo I Theatre, 3733 N.

Soumport Ave. Running time: MPAA rating: Pa Violence. THE CAST Juno Sawyer Kristy McNichol Keys Paul Wlnneld Carruthsra Burt Ives Roland Qray Jameson Parker from a Life magazine story by the French novelist Romain Gary, Fuller spins the fictional story of a young Hollywood actress, Julie Sawyer (Kristy McNichol, still in her wide-eyed period) who accidentally strikes a stray white German shepherd while driving at night through the hills. She takes the wounded animal to a vet and, when no one claims him, ends by taking him into her home. When the animal (who, pointedly, is never given a name) attacks and pins down a prowler who has tried to attack her, Julie adopts the animal as her companion and protector, provoking the jealousy of her feckless screenwriter boyfriend (Jameson Parker).

But it quickly becomes clear that the dog is not normal. Escaping from the house, he attacks and mauls a black sanitation truck driver; later, he pounces on one of Julie's friends, a black actress, during a shoot (the latter sequence, photographed against a projected background of a Venetian canal, provides one of the film's most i- i a 'White hy is "White Dog" back? A blunt, highly cinematic parable about race relations filmed in 1981 by the legendary low-budget auteur Samuel Fuller, it's a movie that was dumped 10 years ago by its nervous distributor, Paramount Pictures. For reasons that were never made entirely clear, the film whose anti-racist message is about as ambiguous as a slap in the face was suspected of its own racist tendencies and was subjected to close supervision by the NAACP, which placed a representative on the set and threatened boycotts. But the finished film fared poorly in a couple of test engagements and was soon sold directly to cable TV. Fans of Fuller's forthright, vig-orous, resolutely unshaded filmmaking style have known about "White Dog" for a decade, but when it was chosen to open a Fuller retrospective at New York's Film Forum this summer, it seemed to strike a nerve with a more general public, developing into an unexpected success.

It's now come, in a print as pristine as any print of this engagingly grimy movie could be, to Chicago's Music Box Theater, 3733 N. Southport for a limited one-week engagement. Perhaps the vicious new twist in racial politics that has dominated this year's news, from the Duke candidacy to the administration's cynical manipulation of the Thomas nomination, has called forth the need for an equally violent, untempered denunciation. Fuller certainly pulls no punches: In the admirably lumpen metaphors of "White Dog," racism is presented as a mental disease, for which there may or may not be a cure. Using real-life details drawn overwhelm Its characters.

R. BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (Water Tower, Webster Place and outlying). More than just a terrific animated film for children, Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" revives the American movie musical, ing on the success of the Oscar-winning "The Little Mermaid." Both feature Broadway-caliber show tunes by the team of Alan Menken and the late Howard Ashman. Singing their hearts out in "Beauty and the Beast" are the characters of Belle, the most independent young woman in her 18th Century French village, and the Beast, a selfish young man turned into a raging animal until he can control his anger and tad in love with a woman and have her fall in love with him. The beast's castle is populated by a cute assortment of anthropomorphic household items, including a dock, a Maurice Chevalier-like candelabra and assorted dishware led by a sweet teapot (voiced by Angela Lansbury) and her teacup son named Chip.

"Beauty and the Beast" also features a marvelous supporting character, a smug stud named Gaston who is determined to many Belle, after he fin- ishes hunting. "Beauty and the Beast" is one of the year's most entertaining films for both adults and children. G. BILLY BATHGATE (Biograph and outlying). Robert Benton's film of the E.L.

Doctorow novel about a young hanger-on during the transitional gangland era of thug Dutch Schutiz and slick Lucky Luciano. Dustin Hoffman plays Schutiz, and this is not one of his best roles or performances. The character comes alive only during one of his violent explosions. Nicole Kidman is the film femme fatale, a mob camp follower. But her character Is only a curio.

Loren Dean plays young Billy, a kid from the Bronx who has some pluck and luck, which catches Dutch's eye and ear. Billy grows sadder and wiser as the film progresses, but his story has little resonance. Bruce Willis Is woefully miscast as a Jewish thug who spouts Yiddish with a bad accent Almost by default, the most fascinating character in 'Billy Bathgate" is Otto Bel man (Steven Hill), Dutch long-suffering adviser. To director Benton's credit, "Billy Bathgate" has a mature quietness. It plays like a faded memory of unimportant characters.

R. BLACK ROBE (Fine Arts and outlying). Bruce Beresfords compelling historical drama about French missionaries trying to "save" Canadian Indians In 1634. nothing else, this film looks so authentic See Flicks Picks, page New this week THE ADDAMS FAMILY Bumham Plain, Water Tower, Webster Place and outlying). A disappointing big-screen version of the TV show.

What's wrong is that this is basically a collection of gag lines that take place whoHy within the Addams family household. That's a mistake, because the humor of the original New Yorker cartoons involved placing the creepy characters next to straight characters and observing the difference. Here there is no surprise to the gags. Additionally, the okes dominate any relationship that might develop between the leads in the film, played by Raul Julia and AnjeUca Huston. The picture looks great; the makeup is fine, but there's no heart in the picture.

PG-13. ANTONIA AND JANE (Fine Aits). Two British friends each ted the story of their relationship, which contains a secret storm that makes us wonder what has kept them together al these years. They examine their strained friendship at an annual dinner in a slight film that is better concept than realized here. Not rated.

AN AMERICAN TAIL: FIEVEL GOES WEST (Biograph, Water Tower and outlying). A thoroughly lackluster, shabbily drawn animated feature about a Jewish mouse family that leaves New York tor more wide-open spaces. The ethnicity of the original film is completely missing; instead, the supporting character of a goofy cat (voiced by Dom De-Luise) takes center stage as little Fievel's best friend. James Stewart's voice is used tor the role of a dilapidated sheriff who also helps Fievel and friends fend off the fiendish plans of a nasty cat. A lot of noisy scenes render the action meaningless.

There are no memorable songs, either. G. BARTON FINK (Esquire). The latest film from the adventurous Caen brothers was the grand prize winner of this year's Cannes Film Festival. What Is exciting about this movie, aside from Its compelling visuals, Is the Coens' view that those who complain about Hollywood being some sort of amorphous evil have only themselves to blame.

Barton Fmk, a social-realist dramatist patterned after Clifford Odets (John Turtur-ro), writes a hit play in New York and Is besieged with offers to go West and write movies. Once In Hollywood Fink tries to maintain his common-man quality by staving In an enormous, rundown hotel that Is one of the film's best characters. And then there is the man next door, a beefy salesman full of mystery played by the underrated John Goodman. "Barton Fink" sutlers only when the contrivances of its story.