The Sacramento Bee from Sacramento, California • 97

The Sacramento Bee Saturday March 4 1989 I It A FAMILY 'Skin Deep' is ugly to the bone ries of The Cre1 csiotle 1131- 4t By Joe Ba Hake Bee Movie Critic 0 0 I livity IN "SKIN DEEP" Blake Edwards' pre- historic male fantasy (circa 1963 I'd say) scores of beautiful sex-starved women catch a glimpse of John Ritter do double takes and immediately pull off his trousers and wrestle him into bed This is the sort of dated movie "romp" in which lusty women just one step removed from prostitution only they do it for free can hardly wait to jump into bed with this one fella and satisfy him You look at these gorgeous creatures and then you look at Ritter whining and whirling all over the place as usual and you think that maybe Edwards has lost his mind The same material was treated as a joke 25 years ago in the dark ages when Capucine Romy Schneider Paula Prentiss and Ursula Andress lusted after an emaciated Peter O'Toole in "What's New Pussycat?" but it's no joke here: Edwards really seems to think that Ritter is super sexy and desirable Maybe he is but to everyone? The boyish Ritter with his unformed personality and hyper-child's face looks as if he's been dipped in polyurethane and then lacquered with two coats He's so slick and sitcom professional that when an outraged woman douses him with a drink he wipes clean without a fuss He's a Ken doll Edwards meanwhile has concocted a pseudo-serious plot to justify all the cheap sex: Ritter is his own worst enemy see? He's a successful writer with novels plays and even the Pulitzer Prize to his credit (yes we're asked to swallow this guff) done in by his self-destructive self-absorbed side He can't say no to either booze or women and when his TV anchor wife (Alyson Reed of "A Chorus Line" looking ghastly) has had it up to here with him and tosses him out on his cute little buns well Ritter just drinks and womanizes some more The opening scene the best one in the movie has Reed walking in and catching Ritter with his mistress who had walked in a little earlier and caught Ritter with another woman "If you're going to shoot him" Reed tells the gun-toting mistress "take him outside They're new bedclothes" 1 I LJL V61es tlseull ti 74: 41 1 oo 1::: A III F' tirg -7-- --'s e4z-I--tgt fr C' "''s 1: :0::: 1 s' 1" 1: 0 1: :0 7 im ie1 kA ts: ::1: i IT 4:: "l': ::1 4 47: 1: i ie l': 1': 7::::: --7' es -7 7 i S' I': "'11' I :11 006 I At ::::) 4ile i5 i i 0 4-e :7: 1': -f 1::: '1 I'S ii---- I- 4 'v: 1 -y 01' A f- -7 i i if 0:::::::::: "7 1-r' 7 ::::4: a1:" 1 '''''71'4- i cr 44 ap -1 cz3 441P11' No 44141 014 11'': 4'''' ts 7 It's all relative: How parent and baby play feeling hungry sleepy cold or in need of comfort they engage in different behaviors This process gives them "one of the earliest opportunities for the emergence of creative patterns of behavior" said Lipsitt His research shows for example that babies prefer looking at complex and more interesting objects Show them two pieces of paper one gray and one with stripes and they prefer to look at the paper with stripes HE REMAINDER of the film all of it has the camera trying to keep up as this super-confident sexual twerp chases women in and out of bars and hotels in and out of rooms and bed By my count the Ritter character infects at least a dozen women here For the longest time there's no acknowledgement by Edwards of anything even remotely contemporary nothing about AIDS and other sexually-transmitted diseases safe sex alcohol moderation or any kind of restraint Finally after sitting there wondering why anyone would want to sleep with John Ritter and without asking any questions first we're treated to the film's first reference to sexual responsibility It involves condoms In what is surely the film's comic centerpiece and what will surely be the most talked about sequence in the film Ritter dons a Day-Glo color condom It's blue and it glows in the dark For the sake of propriety if not good taste Edwards stages the scene in the dark the screen is black so that all that we see is a glowing blue condom prancing around Matters get complicated when the boyfriend of the woman involved bursts in wearing a glowing red condom and proceeds to well duel with Ritter Ritter meanwhile tackles his dubious role here as if it were the part of a lifetime (In his case it may be as he's had a difficult time in movies his last "Real Men" with James Belushi never even made it into theaters) He seems to be totally oblivious to By Sally Squires Washington Post 4-WEEK-OLD BABY is placed in the middle A of a crib The crib dwarfs the child who seems lost in the center of this large void Slowly but seemingly deliberately the baby squirms and wiggles her way up and over so that she is nestled against the side and headboard of the crib At last still she falls asleep Has the baby found a creative solution to her discomfort? Or is she simply moving out of some kind of instinctive need to search until she finds something to give her comfort? These are the kinds of questions confronting researchers as they look for the roots of creativity Can babies be creative? Or do they simply react instinctively? Is creativity something that must be nurtured during infancy so that it can blossom years later? And what are the right conditions for creativity to develop? Far from being the latest chapter in the superbaby syndrome the quest to find the root of creativity in babies and toddlers is part of a drive to better understand the mysteries of infancy and child development "I think that what we are talking about is providing kids the opportunity for the full exploration of their talents and their coping skills" said Lewis Lipsitt director of the Child Study Center at Brown University In short to give them the best tools to deal with the uncertainties of life Studying creativity in infancy is of course far different from studying adult creativity First there is the question of measurement because month-old babies don't write poems and 2-year-olds don't discover laws of physics For this reason scientists assessing creativity in babies look to the basics: how they cry and nurse how they relate to their mothers and other caregivers how they squirm in their beds or turn their heads to follow objects Not everyone agrees that infants can be creative Jean Piaget the Swiss child psychologist thought that creativity didn't develop until 14 to 20 months of age Others such as Harvard University psychologist Jerome Kagan say babies can do things that seem intelligent and appropriate but are not convinced that such behavior should be construed as creative "It's like saying that the salmon that finds its way to spawn is creative" Kagan said "Would you call them creative? No because they don't know what they are doing" Still others believe that infants do indeed have inventive powers and that there is something to infant creativity even if researchers struggle to give it a precise scientific definition "It's in part a matter of semantics" said Dr Stanley Greenspan professor of psychiatry at George Washington University As evidence of creativity in babyhood researchers point to studies suggesting that infants make what few choices they can to enhance their own comfort When babies go through a repertoire of responses to A INFANTS MATURE the opportunities for A creativity grow too Beginning with simple games of peek-a-boo and progressing to the more elaborate hide-and-seek these activities can set the stage for imagination and creativity In playing with a ball a toddler can perform early problem-solving when the ball becomes lodged underneath a chair Suddenly a simple broomstick may become a magical "tool" capable of dislodging the ball Even the old stand-bys pat-a-cake peek-a-boo and hide-and-seek offer ways for children to explore their creative urges These games always involve surprise and unpredictability The child is stimulated intellectually and emotionally There is great relief when the anticipated event is over Tension waxes and wanes during the games "The child learns" Lipsitt said "that finding soluSee CREATIVITY page 3 See SKIN page 4 MOVIE REVIEW SKIN DEEP No Stars 'Design and illustrationHatley Mason Sacramento illustrator draws Cast: John Ritter Vincent Gardenia Alyson Reed Chelsea Fled Nina Foch Michael Kidd and Julianne Phillips Writer-director: Blake Edwards Producer: Tony Adams Cinematographer: Isidore Mankotsky Editor Robert Pergament Music: Ivan Neville Distributor: Twentieth Century-Fox Running time: 103 minutes Century UA the Movies Sacramento drive-in Rated some interesting conclusions The YOUNG LIBRARY By Judy Green INSIDE All Tharp all wonderful 4 The American Ballet Theater's all-Tharp program performed in San Francisco Thursday night was a rare treat says The Beess William Glackin 111:6 1 i' ti J' i 0' '-'(V13 4 ''k 7: 'A( ibi''1 i 547 4 -7 I i f- f- -N-1 i "I 7' A '-'4' 4- AN: i i pi i- 6 -(-e-t 4 7'7" N'' IA 4-40 1' rs-4: --'i' c': i iy T' 4: 'fq vi- t' 4 -4- A '1 4 4k 1 I 11'-' '''V'1'L 'L ss 1 rt 4 0 -I 7 I 4 -t1 i' i a ----4-i 4 141i0 IP AS' 1 or 141'104r ly I) 4 chouh zemke EMEMBER THE GAME we i117 played as children when we all sat in a circle usually on the floor and someone whispered a sentence Into the ear of the next person? Then the sentence was whispered around the circle one ear at a time until the last person repeated out loud what he had heard Laughs and accusations followed Well Sacramento illustrator Deborah Zemke remembers She runs with the Idea in her first book "The Way It Happened" (Houghton $1395 32 pages ages 4 to 10) It all starts when Sarah Malone rides her bike into a tree and then tells Bill what happened He tells his father Sarah can't ride her bike His father tells a coworker than Sarah can't find her bike The co-worker broadcasts the message that Sarah's bike is missing Then the media are told the bike was stolen A play on words leaves Mike accused of the theft and drives him out of town on his bike which he promptly runs into a tree And the first line of the story is repeated Such mix-ups by adults will amuse young listeners and readers They will return to the book repeatedly to figure out just where the miscommunication occurred and whose fault it is Zemke's bright colorful full-page illustrations keep youngsters engaged and the story pulls them to the last page ALSO NEW: Most youngsters will giggle in recognition of the dilemma presented by Pat Lowery Collins in "Taking Care of Tucker" (Putnam $1395 26 A walking talking Babar 6 Canadian animators have brought Babar the elephant to life in a series of stories that will soon air in the United States Comics 8-i Family Page 10 Television See LIBRARY page 4 't I '1.