The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 71

THE BOSTON GLOBE FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 1996 'Mirror': Who's most romantic of them all? ByJayCarr GLOBE STAFF and as intact as ever. But "Mirror" works because Streisand convinces us she doesn't want to be sensible all the time, that she wants some abandon in her life, that she wants love. As the love object she wishes would love her back, Bridges, running a gamut from flustered to oblivious behind his bow tie, is supremely fatuous. And the others are solid, including Pierce Brosnan as the handsome airhead for whom life, a'nd all else, are only skin deep. The mythic underpinning that LaGravenese puts beneath his screenplay gives the film a fullness -and a dimension that are well suited to Streisand's own New York savyj and penchant for lush imagery.

Streisand isn't afraid to have the film. seem old-fashioned right down to its lighting and stately pace. "The Mirror Has Two Faces" is mostly" about being pretty, and it works on the level of classic Hollywood fanta-'0 sy. Unless, of course, you happen tb 1 regard the made-over and newljj confident profs ability to finally- evoke an emotional response from a hard-to-get man as science fiction. weren't able to fill so many of her scenes with a weight of yearning and emotional conviction especially when peering uncertainly and longingly into her own mirror more poignantly than in "Funny Girl." What she convinces us she sees this time is not only a lack of takers, but a limited supply of time.

Her flair for comedy and her down-to-earth bluntness are as apparent 'Swingers' scores! It's a terrific new comedy! about the vast thicket of rules and rituals a guy has to observe to achieve romantic success in the '90s. He's got to approach a girl at just the right moment. He can't be too tentative or too aggressive. And when he's won the key to the kingdom her phone number! he from memories of and, she says, exchanges with her own mother. Mothers and sisters can be tough on a woman in ways nobody else can.

"The Mirror Has Two Faces" will win a lot of sympathy from female audiences for recognizing this and putting it onscreen in big, bold ways. Mimi Rogers is a plus as the younger sister who grew up being told she was the pretty one, and Streisand brings a gallant stoicism to the older, brainier sister living in an emotional wasteland, on the verge of giving up, until Bridges' appealing bachelor comes along. His contribution, in fact, may be the film's most unobtrusively immense. In effect, he's asked to play a preposterous role a man who can't handle sex and anything else at the same time. So he enters into what he declares upfront will be a sexless marriage to Streisand's sex-starved, love-starved woman on the grounds that once sex enters the picture, he falls apart.

Bridges deserves credit for amiably charming his way past this stumbling block to credibility. He manages neatly to fill out the subtext of Richard LaGravenese's more-complex-than-you-expect screenplay while remaining disarm-ingly goofy in his obtuseness. In the original film, the vehicle for change was plastic surgery. Here, although Streisand's character develops a clothes sense and has her hair restyled while her reluctant husband is away in Europe, the change, we are asked to believe, is internal. The self-empowering therapeutic component of "The Mirror Has Two Faces" could sink the film with misguided uplift, if Streisand Barbra Streisand says she's a romantic at heart.

Her new film, "The Mirror Has Two Faces," confirms it Movie anc en sorne throwback to the KeVieW romances Strei- sand used to make "Funny Girl," "The Way We Were," "What's Up, Doc?" it ends not only with a big clinch, but with dartcing in the streets. To Puccini, no less. Not "Butterfly," or "La Bo-heme," but "Turandot," the opera about the ice princess thawed by love. This is only one of the ways in which Streisand's full-hearted remake of the 1958 French melodrama by Andre Cayatte is a big improvement on the original. Although she composed the love theme for her new film, Streisand doesn't sing.

What she does do is recycle the ugly-duckling-turned-prin-cess persona of her early films. But as a Columbia University lit professor who knocks herself out to get handsome Columbia math prof Jeff Bridges to love her, she's more than just a brainy schlump who lives with her mother in an underlit apartment and whose garment of choice is a shapeless chenille robe. Streisand, who directed the film in ways that avoid the usual vanity-production pitfalls, is aging well. That's evident from more than just skin tone. The new film has a richness the older ones couldn't have had because maturity has brought to Streisand's blue eyes new degrees of comprehension, compassion and generosity.

And this time around, she if can't call too soon. The beauty of 'Swingers' lies in the irony of its title: Despite their lounge-lizard posing, these guys will never really live up to their Rat Pack dreams. They're looking for action in an era when talk is what counts. Jeff Bridges manages to charm his way past a stumbling block to his character's credibility. THE MIRROR HAS TWO FACES Directed by: Barbra Streisand Screenplay by: Richard LaGravenese (based on the film "he Miroir a Deux Faces, by Andre Cayatte and Gerard Oury) Starring: Streisand, Jeff Bridges, Pierce Brosnan, George Segal, Mimi Rogers, BrendaVaccaro, Lauren BacaU, Austin Pendleton At: Cheri, suburbs Rated: PG-13 (language, sensuality and some mature thematic material) provides herself with a tartly entertaining reason for finding it difficult to imagine she can be loved a tough, emotionally stingy beautician mother played with martini-dry self-possession by Lauren Bacall.

The latter deserves a shot at a best-supporting-actress Oscar for this show-no-mercy role Streisand evolved f' Working from Favreau's exuberantly witty script, director Doug Liman snakes his camera through parties and back-alley lounges, staging sly visual satirical allusions to 'Reservoir Does', 'GoodFellas', and 'Saturday Night Fever'. He captures something hilarious and touching a new attitude of wistful modesty on the part of young macho cruisers, a recognition that what works today is raw testosterone in a velvet If so exhilarating you want to applaud. Score: A tfJSfcfc- urn -JKS- tWWW jn.buMiiM.1 i. 32EE NICKELODEON KENDALL SQ. NOW PLAYING AT THESE SELECTED THEATRES! kOb (OMMUHWtAHM AH.

Vt RtKUAU 1U-. 333 FILM OOS -494-980O Tin; li It shoots! It quacks! It scores! jowl'" II 1 1 MOVIE Continued from Page Dl pose that Jordan isn't already a performer used to high pressure. Here in his first Hollywood film he a central performance of warmth, ease and low-key charm. Rolling up a much higher batting average than he ever did with the Birmingham Barons, he's charismat-ic, but he's also relaxed in front of the 'cameras and skilled enough to convince us that he's really playing to the 'toons subsequently sketched in by computers. The Warner animators are in heads-up form, too, thoroughly on top of the house style evolved by Chuck Jones, Tex Avery and their envelope-pushing colleagues.

They SPACE JAM Directed by: Joe Pytka Screenplay by: Leo Benvemdi Steve Rudnick, Timothy Harris Herschel Weingrod Starring: Michael Jordan, Bugs Bunny, Wayne Knight, Theresa Randle, Bill Murray, Larry Bird At: Chen, suburbs 1 Rated: PG (mild cartoon language) TTi- "-iCjfYK i tr JiJ.MJC".MJ'JUL' TK1p llilll hA Triumph Omf Of The year's Brf Mcmes! "A Pure Delight! Bato IqsmK mm An Original, Funny And Brilliant Look At Life And Love. Ymfi i Find Ymra Tai king About It The Next Day!" Swi Granger. CRN IKTERHAIIONAL AMERICAN HOVIE CLASSICS And Lauren BacallTreat Us To This Ws Best Romantic Comedy!" "Utterly Charming! Barbra Is Brilliant Both Behind And In Front Of The Camera!" PoulWuA.WBAI RADIO BA Funny, Joyeul, Romantic Comedy!" run the ball into a few new realms of animation, cleverly using the technology as opposed to letting the technology use them. Basketball's physicality and choreography give them the chance to literally extend the ever-dissolving line between sports and entertainment. After "Space Jam," athletes are going to stall lining up outside animators' studios.

Contributing to the exhilarat-ingly silly whizbang flavor are Bill Murray and Larry Bird in cameo roles. Charles Barkley, Patrick Ew-ing, Larry Johnson and a few of their NBA colleagues get into the act, too, as the aliens steal their abilities, leaving them baffled, clueless and, disjointed. The nerdy little aliens make the game interesting when they change shape from snaillike to monsterlike, hulking and bulking up. And Bugs is of course Bugs, who invented hip-hop long before any record executive ever heard of.it. "Space Jam" is a boppy little slam-dunk of an entertainment that reminds us how far we've come since Gene Kelly danced with Jerry the Mouse.

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