The Miami Herald from Miami, Florida • 126

4B The Miami Herald Tuesday December 2 1986 Norris9 spoof a clunker Uovia Hevisws Supermarket If Firewalker (PG) CAST Chuck Norris Lou Gossett Melody Anderson Will Sampson Sonny Landham John Rhys-Da-vies CREDITS Director Lee Thompson Producers Mena hem Golan Yoram Globus Screenwriter Robert Gosneil Cinematographer Alex Phillips Music: Gary Chang A Cannon Group release Running time 110 minutes Vulgar language violence Excellent Very Good A Good Worth Seeing Fair Poor Zero Worthless no star but a battling lump a nerd with a black belt while is more conventional movie-star stuff and stronger As a showcase for physical skills Firewalker is barely adequate: the fight scenes have the staginess of a bad mime act As a vehicle for charm the film is a flickering contradiction in terms The search for redeeming features never ends however In Firewalker it uncovers Melody Anderson who is perfectly daffy as the gal who gets the boys in trouble her map and her psychic impulse that leads them into the snake-infested jungle and under the thrall of a collection of central-casting shamans mystics and spirits When we first meet character she walks into a redneck bar in Arizona and requests the wine list got it says the bartender: and For the rest of this movie which is otherwise clunky and awkward and slow-moving Anderson provides a heavenly goofiness and saves some scenes outright Perhaps someone working in a nobler will cast her in a good movie That too might well be funny By BILL COSFORD Herald Movie Critic Chuck Norris whose action dramas are often unintentionally 'Wik funny edges in- to spoof territo-ry with Fire-cWlk walker and the result is inad-vertently dull a curious cycle a kind of primordial rhythm of bad moviemaking Publicity notes boast that the film is the tradition Romancing the Stone which is another way of saying that the filmmakers wasted little time on shame in their effort to knock off a box-office success The facts that Norris is very much not Michael Douglas and that no Norris film has ever been able to afford a Kathleen Turner seem not to have been a deterrent like Pee Wee Herman making a movie the tradition Gone With the Wind Except that might well be funny Firewalker which has Norris and Lou Gossett as second-rate soldiers of fortune on the trail of Aztec gold in Central America (the old fictional standby of has a moment or two: Norris and Gossett trade rounds of buddy barbs and a couple of them hit "I just want you to Gossett says earnestly to Norris after they have been staked out in a desert and left to die by a ruthless Oriental sheik I blame you for For most of the film however the Bond-ian repartee falls flat in no small part because making Gossett second banana to Norris puts the larger talent in service of the hack appeal is strange A dry tale Solarbabies (PG-13) CAST Richard Jordan Jaml Gerti Jason Patnc Lukas Haas James La Gros Claude Brooks Charles Durnmg CREDITS Director Alan Johnson Producers Irene Wal zer Jock Frost Sanders Screenwriters Walon Green Douglas Anthony Metrov Cmematogra pner Peter MacDonald Mustc Maurice Jarre An MGM UA release Running time 94 minutes Violence clubhouse that the orb brings deliverance The story is slack and at times as dry as its locale which looks like the American Southwest but is actually Spain Not much in the way of tension either the director Alan Johnson (To Be or Not to Be the remake) chose to telegraph the happy wet outcome early on Richard Jordan who can be uniquely menacing (see: The Mean Season Flash of Green is here reduced to lampooning himself in leatherette storm-trooper garb Charles Durning looking wonderfully rumpled as the warden of the orphanage does as little as possible in the heat The skating stunts are routine confined to orphanages where they are routinely abused in the effort to make them proper citizens of the New Order It is a detachment of these youth (the Solarbabies) who receive Bodhi and grasp almost at once after Bodhi has made it rain inside their By BILL COSFORD Herald Movie Cn tic In Solarbabies which inhabits the physical terrain of The Road Warrior and the spiritual landscape of Mother Goose gangs of teens on roller skates do battle over possession of a magic orb The orb glows and hums and occasionally zips about like an extraterrestrial puppy it even comes when called The orb which can speak after a fashion and thus announces that its name is Bodhi has been sent to Earth in Year 41 a very bad time for pretty much everyone a time of the post-apocalyptic future in which the evil Protectorate controls all the water and thus holds much of its population in thrall having turned Earth into a desert planet Youth being trouble under normal circumstances and downright volatile in fascist societies are Liza Burt team up LOS ANGELES (UPI) Liza Minnelli will play Burt leading lady in Rent-A-Cop a new feature film for producer Raymond Wagner It will be a reunion for Reynolds and Minnelli who co-starred in the unsuccessful Lucky Lady in 1975 This time around Minnelli plays a prostitute caught up in a murder involving a gang of drug dealers AMC THEATRES KENDALL TOWN A COUNTRY 10 nAWFMiCMUfM 271-6196 AMC THEATRES OMN1 10 OMNI INTERNATIONAL 372 3439 AMC THEATRES BAKERY CENTRE7 US 1ATHEDRD (tW 662-4641 AMC THEATRES SOUTH DADE PLAZAS US 1ATSW Iflbtfl ST 1044 WOMfcTCOS BYRON-CARLYLE 500 71st STHfcET Miami beach WOMCTCOS 167th ST TWIN BIAS Of MALL 163 ST 631-2481 AMC THEATRES SHERIDAN 7 4999 ShCRiDAN ST HOLLYWOOD 987-4680 APOLLO SOUTH S-8 3600 12 AVE 556 9100 NATIONAL CINEMAS AMBASSADOR IV 1UIW WTTMAVfc 2213636 UN A I i a MOVIES at PEMBROKE 3 Mi WEST Of UNIVERSITY blvd on Pines 8lvD TYt UNITED ARTISTS MOVIES AT THE FALLS US I A 1 j6th ST UASf rw nr mv etoct to cwo waft ftmn 0 lXOMh WCMIS -w I ORA Cmma UL fucwi atari axmv THIS CROC ROCKS! JPGJ3lC-A PARAMOUNT PCTUPF M60YPAKA MvfjU Pi Pjf pr A 3 DON'T MISS this highly entertaining new musical comedy revue that spoofs life in the 80's with some especially funny looks at South Florida Featuring such topical songs as: Bless the Mall is for Medicare Yuppie Creed Shoes Dr Ruth Rag Coral Cables She Spoke Spanish Two Working Women Orange Bowl Pageant and many many more! MUSICAL REVUE Box Office 442-4000 Select-A-Seat Outlets 1-800-323-7328 Tues Wed 830 $12 Thurs 215 8:30 $12 in the ENCORE ROOM AMC OMNI 6 THEATRES OMNI INTERNATIONAL 358 2304 WOMETCO MILLER SQUARE MILLER HO SSW 137IHAVE 387 3494 AMC BAKERY CENTRE 7 AMC MARINAS US AT HED ROAD I57TH IS 41 BlSJKNf BlVD 662-4041 931 2873 GROUP DISCOUNTS 442-2662 A PNOLD MmtuMAN PRODUCING AflTlsnc DWTTOR A STATE TnEAT' FLORIDA IN THE rtEA7T GREATER MIAMI 3500 MAIN HIGHWAY COCONUT GROE ROWA 33133 (305) 442-4000 MOVIES AT PEMBROKE PINES WOMETCO 3 mi oMvMwrv blvd FLORIDA THEATRE ON NEAR! VO 300 PAH HO HOUYWOOO 435 3700 987 9350 Aim Broward ii Gateway Hoge Piaj Laaea Boca Mall Movtet at Pompano Moviet at LauMrtiil Loew Coral Spring Pompano Outlet MoH PEK (s2 PEMBROKE THE FALLS SHOWS STARTING OU BFFORE6 00 PM SENIOR CITS IT ILL TIMES IWVWE TlUfTSA fS0YPFPtlflPV-t mftmxokmtes STAR TREK IV (PG) 1230 2:45 3OS 7 35 ifrOO AN AMERICAN TAIL (G) 143 335 3-30 730915 crrraY LOVIuGT FUHNT VALIKT1HE CAROL CHANN1NG MARY MARTIN OF THE SOUTH (G) 130 4:00 SO 8-00 1H CROCODILE DUNDEE (PG-13) 130 330 5-30 730 935 DEAD TIME STORIES (R) 1 SO 3 30 335 72s 20 SOLARBABIES (PG-13) 140 143 3 30 7 35 833 fel THE COLOR OF MONEY (R) 2:00 4 S3 703 940 THE WRAITH (PG-13) fcOO 403 10 8 IS 1010 A EYE OF THE TIGER (R) 130 843 340 733 030 -T SONG OF THE SOUTH (G) 1-00 3-00 5-00 7-00 IH10 52 PICK-UP (R) MO 4 30 730 IfrOO lav -S-SSbD 1 cu wiia MIAMI BEACH THEATER OF THE PERFORMING ARTS SB TICKETS AT BOX OFFICE SELECT-A-SEAT igyg OUTLETS including JORDAN MARSH STORES ytjL CROCODILE DUNDEE (PG-13) 1-30 3305 30 1-00 10-13 THE COLOR OF MONEY (R) 2:30 5 DO 730 1000 SOLARBABIES (PG-13) 1:43 343 75 MS THE NUTCRACKER (G) 130 3-30 8 30 1-800-468-3540 VSZZ: THE WRAITH (PG-13) 130 330 83j) WO 10:18 feuabmntTrt iw iMiiimihLfctftjaia CHARGIT- BY-PHONE.