The Miami Herald from Miami, Florida • 71

WEEKEND Don Juan farce fails to tickle with lots of cliches S3 C2 By BILL COSFORD Herald Movie Critic Despite the promise of its title Don Juan My Love is minor farce door-slammingmistaken-identity stuff Its central conceit is the return of the legendary Don to Seville 450 years after his death in ghostly form still trying to escape purgatory by the performance of a good deed Double take He finds himself in the lead role of a revival of 'FREDDY'S DEAD: THE FINAL NIGHTMARE' BAR BAND BLUES: Director Alan Parker searched the Dublin club scene to find the actors for The Commitments Taking the stage with authority Commitments1 unknown cast shows zest Don Juan Tenorio filling the shoes of his double a cantankerous star who has been shanghaied by a fan and her mother The spirit of the Don seeks only sweetness and light the human version is a drug dealer an adulterer and all-around bad guy The movie's best gag is the recurring discovery by dissatisfied lovers of the human Don that the ghost is better endowed Leading man Juan Luis Galiardo works hard in his dual role which requires him to lose his wig periodically (in human form) and to collaborate with crude special effects (walking through walls mostly) in his spiritual one Galiardo's performance like those of the several women who play opposite him is a matter of the broad broad brush Never subtle Don Juan My Love is no laugh riot either Director Antonio Mercero seems better cast as a TV-sketch man That's right The dream demon slashes his way to oblivion this time out The end Or is it? vulnerable background singer Bernie and Johnny Murphy as Joey "The Lips" Fagan an older trumpeter who is either a legendary former sideman for the likes of the Beatles and Wilson Pickett or a top-drawer con artist Angeline Ball as Imelda Quirke background singer and object of universal lust has little to do but stand around being gorgeous but she manages on the strength of sheer effervescence to rise above the level of set decoration And Robert Arkins does yeoman's work as the hustling high-hoping manager Jimmy Rabbitte who assembles the band He is forever conducting imaginary interviews with himself which could have been a rather clunky narrative device but Arkins makes it work Then there's Andrew Strong who as lead singer Deco qualifies as a major find He's only 16 but looks and sounds like 40 ripping through old Wilson Pickett standards with a throaty muscular fury even Wicked Pickett would have to respect His character is a sloppy egocentric pig and although there's admittedly not much range required in the part Strong plays it with much more gusto and assurance than you might expect from a boy who had never acted musical equipment the movie takes too long to get to the payoff and then underplays it By the end of the film it's apparent that screenwriters Dick Clement Ian La Frenais and Roddy Doyle are more interested in exploring the cumulative effect of these incidents on the band than in following any one individual plot thread through to some resolution This gives the ending a certain poignancy and believ-ability but it also makes the film drag considerably in its third half hour Humor helps The plot deficiencies are leavened to a considerable degree however by the script's humor Some of the throwaway bits are gently hilarious as when Michael Aherne (as piano player Steven Clifford) confesses in embarrassment to his priest that he's been hanging around with vulgar people and listening to vulgar songs Like When a Man Loves a Woman by Marvin Gaye At which point the unseen priest whispers a solemn correction: "T'was Percy Sledge who sang that particular song" Script problems aside you can't go wrong with any film that has a sense of humor that sly MOVIE REVIEW THE COMMITMENTS (R) tt Cast: Robert Arkins Andrew Strong Michael Aherne Angeline Ball Maria Doyle Dave Finnegan Bronagh Gallagher Felim Gormley Glen Hansard Dick Massey Johnny Murphy Kenneth McCluskey Director: Alan Parker Roger Randall-Cutler and Lynda Myles Screenwriters: Dick Clement lar La Frenais and Roddy Doyle Cinematographer: Gale Tatter-sall Music coordinator: John Hughes A Twentieth-Century Fox release Running time: 1 18 minutes Vulgar language mild sexual situations some violence before Little room for plot The script manages the rather neat trick of individualizing its rather large and unwieldy cast The only problem is with all that characterization there is precious little room for plot The script stubbornly refuses to move along it is less a story than a catalog of the pitfalls facing a young band When it does set up potentially interesting conflicts sexual rivalries within the band Jimmy's dealings with a shady character to secure a 5 I By LEONARD PITTS Jr Herald Arts Writer The Commitments is the best structurally unsound movie you're likely to see for quite a while From director Alan Parker (who brought us among other films Fame) it circles much the same territory as did Fame the trials and angst of young performers on the road to stardom This time the young performers are a group of Irish kids in a '60s-style soul band called the Commitments Parker is reported to have scoured the club scene in Dublin to find working-class locations and local musicians who could also act You're not far into the film before you find yourself admiring unreservedly the job he's done The locations have a certain grimy reality The musical sequences are downright combustible exploding off the screen And the cast young and inexperienced as they are manage to convey poignant believabil-ity Some surprises Noteworthy among them are Bronagh Gallagher as the MOVIE REVIEW DON JUAN (U) Cast: Juan Luis Galiardo Maria Barranco Loles Leon Rossy de Palma Director: Antonio Mercero Screenwriters: Joaquin Oristrell Antonio Mercero Cinematographer: Carlos Suarez Music: Bernardo Bonezzi An International Film Exchange release In Spanish with English subtitles Running time: 96 minutes Vulgar language nudity sexual situations In Dade only: At Cocowalk I rn I a 8.