Daily News from New York, New York • 478

Friday 5 She's just mild about 'Harry' By KATHLEEN CARROLL -l ix y2 HARRY A SON. With Paul Newman, Robbv Benson. Directed by Newman. At the U.A. Rivoli.

Loews 83d St. Quad and Loews New York Twin. Running time: 1 hour, S3 minutes. Rated PG. kAUL NEWMAN IS one of the -1.

A 4 1 Si 1 I few Hollywood stars who can' really perform behind the Since there is no real dramatic conflict between the two main characters, the movie just moseys along. It does contain some amusing moments. Joanne Woodward perks things up considerably as the refreshingly tart, sharp-witted owner of a bird store and Newman seems to loosen up the minute they are together which is, unfortunately, not nearly enough. Judith Ivey, playing a sex-crazy secretary, has two comical scenes one in which she seduces the goggle-eyed Howard, the other in which she all but devours the terrified Harry. Ossie Davis also provides welcome comic relief in his bit part as a man who's so broke he has to charge Howard for a beer in his own house.

Benson, who tends to bat his beautiful dark eyes at the camera, tries so hard to be sweet and adorable that he's almost painful to watch. Newman is clearly not very comfortable directing himself, to the extent that he fails to give himself equal camera time and all but turns the movie over to Benson. Howard, much to his father's astonishment, sells his first story for an unusually fat fee. It's supposedly a tribute to his father, and the editor describes it as being "profoundly moving and terribly funny." "Harry. Son" is never really moving and it's only intermittently funny.

Robby Benson and Paul Newman: painful to watch cameras. "Rachel, Rachel," the movie in which he made his directorial debut, was so impressive it earned him the much-coveted New York Film Critics' best director award. He did an equally superb job of directing his wife, Joanne Woodward, in "The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds." Unfortunately, Newman's newest movie, "Harry Son," does not begin to measure up to his previous work. The movie, which Newman partly wrote with Ronald L. Buck, is less than two hours long, but the script rambles so that it feels as if one has spent an entire lifetime in the theater.

The movie is a syrupy love story involving a stubborn widower and his live-in son. Newman plays the father, a beer-guzzling crane operator who understandably loses his job because of a sudden dizzy spell and who becomes a hard-edged shell of a man after he fails to find another job. Ignoring his obvious need for some kind of medical reason, never even talks about the possibility of going to college although he is supposedly scholarship material is such a decent kid he even resumes his relationship with his extremely pregnant high school girlfriend (Ellen Barkin) despite her dubious reputation as the school tramp. He then delivers her baby in a cab and accepts her son as his own. Only once does he actually talk back to his nagging father, in a scene in which Benson's angry outburst seems totally forced.

attention, he does nothing but hang around his tiny frame house, trying to hound his son, Howard (Robby Benson), into finding "a job that's going some place." Any other parent would be simply thrilled to have an adoring son like Howard, even if he does work at a car wash while struggling to write the great American non-fiction article for some indeterminate magazine. For how many young men serve elegant candlelight dinners and do all the housecleaning without a whimper? Howard, who, for some mysterious i-WAun'iua wmu ui mmm imnn hi i.m inr'ii'V nil rii i Lust and melodrama Growing up in post-Civil War Spain Vs DEMONS IN THE GAROFN. Molina, Ana Belen. Directed by Mnurl rri Araqon. At the Lincoln Plata 1.

Running tune: I hour, minutes. Rated R. With English Mies. -VV ft A .1, 's jestikr tHmrtMML.iMi teas. 4 AGAINST ALL ODDS.

With Rachel Ward, Jeff Bridge. Directed by Taylor Hackford. At Loews State, Loews 34th St. Showplace and 66th St. Running time: 2 hours.

Rated R. Jeff Bridges, Rachel Ward: love in the morning, evening, afternoon The bewildered football player finally catches up with a legal secretary (played by the delightful Swoosie Kurtz) who made a date to meet him for a drink before his Mexican jaunt and rEMOS IN THE Garden," 15 a swcet ralner insipid Spanish movie which has somehow managed to win awards at several major film festivals, is about a small boy who learns how adults operate when he moves in with his grandmother. It so happens that the boy's grandmother owns a smalltown grocery store which is doing a flourishing business in postC'ivil War Spain because of her ability to acquire black market goods. The boy's mother (Angela Molina) is the daughter of a former member of the losing Republican army and, as such, she has been forced to raise her son in total poverty, for the grandmother felt the woman was not good enough to marry one of her "good looking" sons. Juanito (Alvaro Sanchez Prieto), although he misses his mother, is thus only too happy to find himself in what amounts to a garden of delights, a bustling household full of such sought-after items as chocolate candy.

Juanito really begins to enjoy the bourgeois comforts of his new home when a medical exam reveals that he has rheumatic fever (Continued on page 15) GAINST ALL ODDS," direc- ifHnk tor TavIor Hackford's first movie since his sizzling box-office success, "An Officer and a Gentleman," is actually a remake of "Out of the Past," a 1947 movie which starred Jane Greer. Funnily enough, Greer also plays an important role in the current version, but this time she has been cast as the conniving, wickedly rich mother of leading lady Rachel Ward. The years have had no visible effect on Greer who, in point of fact, looks far more glamorous than Ward, the movie's supposed femme fatale. Eric Hughes' screenplay, on the other hand, which is based on Daniel Mainwaring's original, script, seems hopelessly dated. Although "Against All Odds" takes place in the congested, fast-moving Los Angeles of the '80s, it has all the phony intensity of a '40s melodrama.

Hackford can't seem to make up his mind whether to concentrate on doing an icy expose of big-city corruption on the order of "Chinatown," or to play up the triangular romantic situation in the hope of matching the steamy sensuality of "Body Heat." The end result is a foolishly convoluted movie in which the characters quickly lose their credibility. The movie gets off to an intriguing start as, Jeff Bridges, in the role of a battered football player, is abruptly from an L.A. team owned by the football-hating Greer. His pal (James Woods), a self -described "sports accountant" (that's bookie, in plain English) who acts as the front man for a fancy new disco, wants him to go to Mexico to find his ex-girlfriend (Ward) who ran out on him after nearly stabbing him to death. The ex-football hero finally spots this dangerous lady in Cozumel and they have a love affair that is presumably so torrid that they can't even tour the famous Mayan ruins of Chic hen Itza without sneaking into a cave and grappling with each other in the nude.

And who should spot them in the clinch but the football player's former training coach (Alex Karras) who drops in on their cave, saying, "Sorry to walk in on you like that." Needless to say, he does not receive a warm welcome. In fact, thanks to the runaway heiress' skills with dangerous weapons, he winds up with a bullet in his chest The spoiled rich girl dashes back to the arms of her former lover because, as she explains, she's used to having a man handle things for her even things like possible murder charges. who is still sitting patiently at the bar, suffering from the effects of what appears to have been at least a month of continuous drinking. The movie plunges on with the hero confronting the self-centered heroine, her shady current companion, and her mother's equally slippery, high-powered lawyer (played with his usual relish by Richard Widmark) in a ludicrous midnight shootout in the very canyon where the mother plans to build her controversial condominium project. Ward, who looks almost forlorn in her new short haircut, just does not have the kind of sensuous appeal that would encourage two men to pursue her.

Bridges and James Woods set off far more sparks whenever they are together, but that's because they are exceptionally good actors who tackle even the most idiotic roles with a great deal of verve. In the end, it's Hackford who really fumbles the ball this time. Kathleen Carroll 01.