The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 38

38 THE BOSTON GLOBE FRIDAY. OCTOBER 5, 1984 CRITICS' CHOICES Low marks for Killer's inept 'Teachers' Theater "You Never Know" A musical by Cole Porter retrieved from an original version not before produced until recently (the show made it to Broadway in 1937 but in a hyped-up production that ran counter to Porter's minimalist intent). The evening is a mixed blessing: good Porter music, fairly even performances, and a book -adapted from a dumb Viennese farce as predictable as it is irritating. The Huntington Theater production is handsome, stylish and capable but, finally, unable to cover the musical's thin and repetitive plot. At the Boston University Theater.

KEVIN KELLY David Hoose will conduct the first new-music concert, of the season, which features works by Tobias Picker, Ludovico Einaudi. Iosif Pa-padatos, Seymour Shifrin, and Dona) Fox arid Hypothesis II," the hit cif the 19.83 new-music festival at Tanglevvood). Tomorrow evening at 8 in the Longy School, 1 Pollen Cambridge. Singers at Symphony Hall Sunday afternoon at 3 the Irish tenor Frank Patterson sings a program ranging from Mozart to "Danny Boy" and "Amazing Grace." Then at 8, under the auspices of the Wang Celebrity Series, Dame Kirl Te Kanawa makes her Boston debut in a program of music by Mozart. Schubert, Strauss.

Faure, Duparc and Canteloube. RICHARD DYER stitutionalized inhumanity. But W. R. McKinney's parallel screenplay for "Teachers" only seems opportunistic.

What should have been hilarious irreverent humor -one teacher Is a mental patient whose derangement is regarded as perfectly normal, another teacher jaded into inertness dies of a heart attack and nobody notices collapses because "Teachers" isn't able to push off from any comparable depth of feeling. We never quite know whether we're supposed to laugh or be moved by the human distress, and even death, here. The best moments in "Teachers" come at the start, and they're visual. Antiburglar gates are opened by armed security guards. The front office, with "Knowledge Is Power" emblazoned across its wall, is made to resemble a squad room in a crime-ridden precinct house as a student bleeding from a stab wound Is manhandled by a guard.

But then McKinney's prefab dialogue replaces the siege Im REVIEW I MOVES TEACHERS Directed by Arthur Hiller, screenplay by W. R. McKinney. Starring Nick Nolte, JoBeth Williams, Judd Hirsch. Ralph Macchio, Allen Garfield, Lee Grant, Richard Mulligan.

At Cinema 57 and suburbs, rated (violent gunshot death). By Jay Carr Globe Staff "Teachers" takes on a serious subject a school system whose shortcomings cheat kids but it can't decide if it wants to be scathing like "The Hospital" or cute like "Welcome Back, Kotter." In a schizoid way, it tries to be both, and sell a few rock soundtrack albums besides. Every time it sets up a provocative situation, it's punctured by a clumsy lunge at a cheap laugh. And much of the talk has a tv sitcom ring. When a gym teacher impregnates a student and is found out, an assistant principal bypasses anything like real feeling by saying, "Teamwork, Troy, does not mean going out and starting your own team." The void inhabited by the leads is even more conspicuous.

There's a plastic romance between Nick Nolte. as a once-idealistic teacher, and JoBeth Williams, as a currently idealistic lawyer who once was his pupil. Their only reason for being together is so that they Music Alea III Theodore Antoniou is on sabbatical this season, so good fun. For pure joyous abandon-this film is hard to beat." Steve Morse, Boston Globe Teacher Nick Nolte with Judd Hirsch and ex-pupil Jobeth Williams i I ft agery and sinks a stronger than nciiol raci TVi pvnpHipnrv-nHpnf- rVSv. can take turns making lofty, but hollow, speeches.

She's representing an illiterate who's suing the school for having graduated him. He's the teacher whose deposition will make or break the case. On their first date, he says: "There's nothing worse than a female lawyer with a cause." She replies, "Except a male teacher without one." Nolte and Williams are wasted here. They're just walking placards. "The Hospital" is the one good film among the many that director Arthur Hiller has made.

What made it work was the real despair in Paddy Chayefsky's screenplay. It imparted bite to the outrageous humor and something like nobility to George C. Scott, who tried to treat people humanely, despite in- r- Hi ed administrators played by Judd Hirsch and Lee Grant are just setups. And Ralph Macchio, so engaging in "The Karate Kid," is squandered as a street-smart illiterate. He starts out as the reawa-kener of Nolte's idealism, but ends up seeming no more than a walk-on in a SoHo fashion show, with his army overcoat and gray fedo I Alt CTAjJ 1 I SHOWCA8 1 SHdWHSI 1 I 1 cfMik- CIWIM 6 RfVfRE DfDHAM WWiWoiowwau I i TSVSsft 1 fun i.

373-4410 Jt I POLBY SACK ONf MA 57 Extra I I SACK ONfrn57" ksvoh 4n an txtca ra, leacners may mean wen, but it flunks out. i finlr- nut jl Loto onOWS I OnlfJflT Snu lOmorrow In flOVBro Br.u fJJunam, aN AMERICAN py MiMBaMaBarjia.BWMirJM wrMBi MawiaiaMMiBaBBraa. rai iMMgii iiwiiim imi 17 1 feCl ASTERPIEC THE MOVIE TO 11, jl WILLIAMS TOM vj i FOR THE ACADEMY AWA -Pat Collins, CBS TELEVISION "A magnificent motion-picture that achieves true greatness. The movie makes you feel proud to be an American. The actors are all but no praise can be high enough for Sally Field.

bu leave uplifted and thrilled tO be alive." -RexReed i I Jt ii a lid i y-' performances. -Michael Blowen, BOSTON GLOBE ''V' 111 i "One of the finest films in years about growing up American." -Vincent Canby, N.Y. TIMES "This movie will find its place in many a heart this season. Best of all is the climax." -Richard Schickel, TIME MAGAZINE i iMUfJI! fill Jv I ii 111 1 SHE WAS AN ORDINARY HOUSEWIFE UNTIL KES TRIP TO PARIS TURNED MO AN EXTRAORDINARY ADVENTURE ij i i' "1 ii i ii.1 imirn. mil fifi "gi fl'W no ii a if kkt r'i aim.

1 SALLY FIELD TMTBICAL FILMS PRESENTS A KRCSTCHAPIN PvOTirTinH PLACES IN THE HEART A RICK ROSENTHAL AMERICAN DREAMER IOBETK WILLIAMS TOM CONTI cmd GIANCARLO GIANHINI Executive Producer BARRY KROST Music by LEWIS FUREY Screenplay by JIM KOUF DAVID GREENWALT Story by ANN Produced by DOUG CHAPIN Directed by RICK ROSENTHAL Tri-Star Pictures Presents SALLY FIELD "PLACES IN THE HEART" LINDW CROUSE ED HARRIS AMY MADIGAN JOHN MALWDVKH DANNY GLOVER Edited by CAROL LITTLETON, ACL Director of Photography NESTOR ALMENDROS, AS.C. Executive Producer MICHAEL HAUSMAN Produced by ARLENE DONOVAN Written and Directed by ROBERT BENTON r6, Iikj AM digf-a ftWfve.1 PG mHV GUUMX SUCIXSTB) 3 Sorry, no pM.s (coprad Stck Trw.tr. for lrO wigwnmt. i9A4TrhStar Pictures Rtghtt Rnetverf SACK CHRI 1-2-3 ye cmi iom sm atom SACK SOMERVIUE AT ASSCMMT SOUAMS 31-7000 CIRCLE CINEMA (Hf STNUT HIIL Wf CtlVilANOCIKLl 566-4040 SHOWCASE REVERE 286-169 1 an II tACK CINEMA NATICK 137-S40 tOUTf 9 DANVERS SHOWCASE DEDHAM 3J6-495S toun i SHOWCASE WCBURN 933-3330 121 Nfftl 93 SACK 1 SHOWCASE 1 general cinlma "I 1 i1 CHERI 1-2-3 DEDHAM CHESTNUT KILL DAN vils SOOAiTONOPPSHfRAiON 3264955 RTfc.9 at HAMMONDS! 593-Jl BOSTON 536-2870 ROUTF 1 a 2772500 IXIT OFMT WMMnMrMr raaaaiaaaaaaaaaaMrASBBBraBaBaa I iim ii i tnmmmf 1 if Exua Late Show. Toriruht nd Tomorrow Circia.

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