Daily News from New York, New York • 451

FIllPAw MOVIES Muppets all sweetness light By KATHLEEN CARROLL y2 THE MUPPETS TAKE MANHATTAN. With Juliana Donald, Lonnie Price. Directed by Frank Oz. At Manhattan Twin, RKO National Twin, Gramercy, RKO 84th St. Twin, and Loews 3d St.

Quad. Running time: 1 hour, 32 minutes. Rated G. powder, rouge and eye pencil is going to compensate for Miss Piggy's lack of cheekbones and eyebrows. Fortunately, nothing can be done to alter Miss Piggy's pig headed personality.

But this time around, instead of sounding off about her star potential like a somewhat snot-nosed but dedicated career woman of the '80s, she keeps harping on the subject of marriage, as if her newest role model were Doris Day. This playful imitation of an old-time Hollywood musical is not nearly as lively or as imaginative as Muppet Show" or "The Great Muppet Caper," if only because its BEFITS a star. Miss Piggy has acquired a brand-new frizzy hairdo for her latest movie, "The Muppets Take Manhattan." She also gets a make-over job, courtesy of Joan Rivers who, in her cameo bit as a self-appointed beauty expert, becomes increasingly frantic as she realizes that no amount of creator, director Frank Oz, has made the mistake of trying to tame this ardent feminist shrew and stifle her career demands. This time Miss Pig.v is going get her little green man or bust, and the man in question, Kermi the Frog, appears to be in mort danger of succumbing to Miss new "Total Woman" routine aft years of politely refusing advances. OJ-ERMIT.

ALONG with all Muppet chums, has someho NJL graduated from college an. is dying to present "Manhattan Molo dies," his original college variety show, on Broadway. Miss Piggy, meanwhile, who is happily wearing Kermit's school pin, merely informs him that he must keep his promise to marry her the instant his show becomes a Broadway hit. So you can see Kermit's predicament. Still, he persists in his effort t' find a producer.

Dressed in the gol chains and garish jumpsuit of a lit lywood hustler, he sashays into ti, office of a New York theatrical agon', spouting all the right power phrases "I'll have my people call your poo pie," he says. But the musical turn out to be a hard-sell and Miss Piggy who, in one of the more energetic scenes, successfully nabs a Central Park purse-snatcher with the help of borrowed roller skates has her work cut out for her. Despite the contribution of sue! well-known actors as Mayor Koch. "The Muppets Take Manhattan" is strangely flat. It's no wonder that the Muppets" severest critics, the grumpy Waldorf and Statler, are less thar pleased with this mushy movie.

Watching Miss Piggy and "Kermie" cuddle together in a hansom calj. Waldorf grimly notes, "They're ii: love." Growls Statler: "Kind of makes you sick, doesn't it?" lilliilWlll pK- IRglif SI Cihfik' From left: Miss Piggy, aV' 1 I 11 hS 1 Kermit, Dabney Coleman l4SkmdM andJoan Rivers rir JBPr St 'Class' never comes to order THE LAST STAR FIGHTER. With Lance Guest, Dan O'Herlihy. Directed by Nick Castle. At the Rivoii, Gemini, 84th East, the New Yorker and Loews (3d St.

Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes. Rated PG. LEX, AN earth-bound 18-year- old who helps his mother run a seedy but friendly Califor Mi With Andre" where, instead of two New Yorkers swapping sophomoric pseudo-profundities, six kids with duty jeans yell and smack each otlii; around. With "Class" as with "A i dre," there are people to whom this idea will appeal; to anyone else, it's two hours that will seem like 82. This doesn't mean, however, there is nothing to be learned from "Class Enemy." There is.

A new way to mako meatballs, as demonstrated by Voll mond, one of the "students." And now, for the benefit of those who nmy miss the movie, here's the recipe Don't say we never did anything for you. Vollmond's Meatballs 1 package day-old rolls 1 pint milk A little ground pork Salt Pepper 1 egg Shred rolls and soak in milk until soft Mush together. Add small amount of pork (Vollmond's hint: "Buy it with fat-it's cheaper and tastes libera: sprinklings of salt and pepper, and egg Mix, then make into meatballs shape you Fry on both sides until done. Vollmond mixes it up in a Puma shoe box, but a regular kitchen bowl should also work. recruits, though beastly-looking creatures who appear to be rejects from "Star Wars" Alex bows out.

Back home he is greeted by his robot double who, when Alex changes his mind and decides to accept the challenge of defending the galaxy, runs into a number of comical situations as he struggles to conceal his real identity from Alex' girlfriend (Catherine Mary Stewart) and kid brother (Chis Hebert). Dan O'Herlihy, playing a kindly, iguana-like alien who navigates Alex' warship, is extremely funny as he offers encouragement. "It will be a slaughter," complains the reluctant space warrior. "That's the spirit," shouts his eager navigator. The actual space sequences in "The Last Starfighter" seem fairly routine after the razzle-dazzle visuals of more expensive movies.

But, fortunately, director Nick Castle keeps cutting back to the trailer park and the amusing reactions of the Norman Rockwell-type earthlings to all the strange happenings at the Starlite Strarbrite trailer park. "What's all this?" asks Alex mother, staring at the spaceship that has just landed in her backyard. "I've been to another planet, ma," declares a now-contented Alex who has finally found the land of opportunity. Kathleen Carroll By DAVID HINCKLEY y2 CLASS ENEMY. With Ernst Stoetzner.

Udo Samuel. German with subtitles. At the Vandam. Running time 125 minutes. No rating.

r-aHE HIGH SCHOOL seems to be a clean, well-lighted place LJ where happy students stand around chatting. But down one corridor lies another world defaced walls, broken lockers, trash-covered floors and Room 10A, where the school has exiled six kids it couldn't handle. As we get to know them, we see why. Wearing dirty clothes and nihilistic sneers, they're the ones who created this shambles. They smash furniture, throw garbage.

Loosely led by a bully named Fetzer, their sole joy is crushing the spirit of teachers. As the movie begins, they wait for the next one to arrive. Eventually, however, it becomes clear there will be no more; the world has abandoned them in their self-created prison. So they curse their own lives and each other, revealing the loneliness, frustration and self-loathing beneath the surly facade of People Who Don't Fit It's all quite symbolic, and the story was probably powerful in its earlier life as a stage play. On screen, however, it soon devolves into a bizarre punk version of "My Dinner nia trailer park, can hardly wait to venture out into the big, wide world.

But he is not exactly thrilled when he is offered a job in outer space in "The Last Starfighter," a suprisingly endearing tale of inter-galactic warfare. It all happens like this: Alex, played most appealingly by Lance Guest, has just wowed his neighbors by scoring a record number of hits on his unique Starfighter video game when out of the darkness pops the fastest set of wheels ever seen in his part of the Hollywood hills. In the driver's seat is the game's inventor, a slick promoter, played with his usual con man's charm and verve by Robert Preston. The car, carrying the astonished Alex, suddenly soars into the air only to wind up in the underground garage of a planetary substation. There it soon becomes clear that Alex has been recruited to defend "the frontier" against another of those power-mad space bullies who are forever turning up in movies like this.

After checking out the other.