The Kansas City Star from Kansas City, Missouri • 46

mm THHIHI Ml II wastes a good premise on horror cliches John Carpenter film delivers the concept but not the execution By ROBERT BUTLER Movie Editor How it rates the Mouth of a horror melodrama is rated for images of horror and Ian-age Running time is 1 hour minutes psychiatric institution This is John Trent (Sam Neill) who is actually putting on a show of madness As he explains to an investigator (David Warner) who has come to interview him safer in a padded cell than out in the real world Most of the movie is a flashback showing how Trent came to be in this predicament Turns out a hotshot insurance investigator put on the trail of best-selling author Sutter Cane who has mysteriously vanished The publisher (Chariton Heston) wants to collect on a policy on life but Trent suspects the whole thing is a scam designed to build publicity for new honor novel called the Mouth of Meanwhile millions of fans are seized by mass psychosis Riots break out at bookstores Meaningless murders take place Trent a fervent disbeliever writes the hysteria off as Hula and sets out in search of a New England town possibly fictitious that is the setting of one of books accompanied on this quest by editor (Julie Carmen) who of Course knows the novels inside out and recognizes scenes from books that now are taking place in real life They finally do locate Cane (Jurgen Prochnow) only to learn that the guardian of the gates of hell preparing to unleash an avalanche of slimy tentacled demons Ultimately the Mouth of devolves into computer- generated silliness but even before that it shows some problems Carpenter exhibits a sly sense of humor in the early scenes but then abandons this grim amusement in favor of Lovecraftian grotesqueries He has casting problems too Sam Neill is a fine actor but just not right as a hard-boiled detective Carmen is colorless and uncharismatic Hardcore horror types will probably enjoy the special effects and even the casual creepshow fan can appreciate the atmosphere of dread Carpenter dishes up But despite a few chilling moments especially a final segment depicting a barren post-apocalyptic world the Mouth of is neither serious enough nor playful enough to be truly memorable Before it turns humdrum and familiar about halfway through John the Mouth of toys with a delicious premise Imagine that one of those Stephen King-type horror best sellers is more than just a good read Suppose the carrier of a psychological virus if you will and that anyone who reads the books gets sucked into its world and ends up going ravingly murderously mad Weirder yet imagine that readers' find themselves characters in the story destined to act out the part described to them on the printed page Michael De screenplay opens with a violent fellow in a straitjacket being manhandled into a tries to be a Woody Allen movie It has all the elements except significance By ROBERT BUTLER Movie Editor on a limb Tough language issues make this film a gutsy fascinating venture By ROBERT BUTLER Movie Editor How it rates a romantic comedy is rated PG-13for language and sexual material Running time is 1 hour 40 minutes Whoopi Goldberg Mary-Louise Parker and Drew Barrymore are on a road-trip adventure in on the REVIEW How It rates on the a comedydrama is rated for strong language and sexuality Running time is 1 hour 50 minutes If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery then Woody Allen should send David Frankel a case of champagne Either that or name him in a plagiarism suit For his feature film writingdirect-ing debut Frankel has given us which strives mightily in every area of endeavor to be exactly like a Woody Allen movie From the Spartan opening credits (accompanied by a Louis Armstrong recording) to the subject matter the acting style signature visual elements and the presence of Mia Farrow is ersatz Woody Allen The only difference is that the Frenkel's character is a woman Sarah Jessica Parker plays Gwyn a poky but neurotic young Jewish woman who in the very fust scene appears talking directly to the camera (see about love relationships and her fear of marriage The whole movie in fact consists of flashbacks as Gwyn discusses her life with her unseen shrink (aha another Woody Allen theme) Gwyn (played by Parker with trademark verbal stuttering and sputtering) is engaged to a sincere and loving young zoologist Matt (Gil Bellows) who wants desperately to get married Gwyn however is nervous about committing One look around suggests that marriage is at best a huge compromise mom (Mia Farrow) is having an affair with Antonio (Antonio Banderas) the sexy-but-sensitive Cuban nurse who cares for grandmother Her dad (Paul Mazursky) is having a bad case of midlife crisis and is fooling around Perched precariously between calculated predictability and almost suicidal risk-taking on the may be a mess but a fascinating one On the one hand this latest from veteran director Herbert Ross Herbert seems determined to go as far out on a limb as a studio-backed movie can It features some of the rudest language heard on the screen in ages (including the ear-blistering and is gutsy enough to have a lesbian as the leading character But it also wallows in banality tapping into the disease-of-the-week movie the unrequited love story and about a half-dozen other genres The film alternately is furiously funny and ickily sappy The screenplay by Don Roos White basically is a road movie East Coast lounge musician Jane DeLuca (Whoopi Goldberg) decides to start life anew in California Through the classifieds she hooks up with Robin Nickerson (Mary-Louise Parker) a wispy wan WASP real estate agent who also is heading west and wants to share driving expenses a partnership of opposites Jane is earthy and crass Robin is a cutesy neat-freak described by Jane whitest woman on the face of the Their odyssey takes a detour to Pittsburgh where they pick up with his travel agent brother (Kevin Poliak) has abandoned his pregnant wife to cavort with his business spouse (Naomi Campbell) Meanwhile newly married sister (Carla Gugino) is quickly tiring of her pro football player husband and taking up with an old high school flame No Gwyn is marriage shy Frankel has churned out dozens of Woody-ish verbal gags such as a confession by mother an interior decorator that her first tryst with Antonio at a cheap motel was a disaster relax the room was so many awful Or comment to her father upon learning of her indiscretions: imagine Mom having sex with another man I still shudder when I think about Mom having sex with you" The screenplay is crammed with similar laugh lines though Frankel sometimes seems to be trying too hard by end some of the jokes seem pretty forced Perhaps more of a drawback is that for all the superficial diversion it supplies never achieves significance Frankel does earn a point though for avoiding the temptation to give his film a pat romantic denouement Ultimately is like settling for an when what you really want is a Guinness The sick uptight mother appears to nurse her daughter setting off a collision of her conservative values with the looser attitudes of the younger women And just a few of the developments Whew! on the fills its plate with so much stuff that the whole affair becomes monstrously unwieldy amazing given the pedestrian nature of most of films is that individual scenes are often remarkably good chock-full of explosive humor and pathos Still it would require a true world-class director to give form and cohesion to such an all-over-the-place effort Unlike Green which was about lesbians but admit it is upfront about sexual orientation Once established though the film gets tremendously nervous about giving details Despite a sassy performance from Goldberg her character has been effectively neutered If Jane has a sex life not privy to it Parker is effective in a role eerily like the one she played in Green The real surprise though is Barrymore who plays a dumb-blonde-in-train-ing with a winning combination of sweetness emotional innocence and sexual bawdiness old friend the Lolita-ish Holly (Drew Barrymore) This requires a confrontation with abusive drug dealer boyfriend (Matthew McConaughey) whom the three women leave unconscious and tied to a chair A three-dimensional diagram would be needed to chart all of the plot twists on the delivers but here are the salient points: One of the three women is dying of AIDS character a lesbian nurses a case of unrequited love for both of her traveling companions character is pregnant by her boyfriend Furthermore the creep has died as a result of a clunk to the head suffered during escape Now the fecund child-woman must stand trial for manslaughter 1 6 THE KANSAS CITY STAR Friday February 3 1995.