Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 21

mouies DETROIT FREE PRESSFRIDAY, DEC. 10, 1982 3B Richard Pryor pulls laughs out of thin air in 6The Toy' THE TOY 1 1 1 1 1 () 'It V- fvj Area theaters Jack Brown Richard Prvor U.S. Bales Jackie Gleason Eric Bales Scolt Schwartz Mr. Morehouse Ned Bealty Fancy Teresa Ganjel Berkley Wilfrid Hyde-White Produced by Phil Feldman for Rav Stark; Directed bv Richard Donner; Written bv Carol Sobieskl, adapted from Francis Veber's script for the French film, "Le Photography by Lasjlo Kovacs; Music by Patrick Williams; Distributed by Columbia Pictures. PARENTS' GUIDE: PG, mild profanity.

remains in the rubble of "The Toy," I'll put the gun away and give you the good news. With no visible support from either his co-stars, the script, or director Richard Donner, and forced to work within the muzzled confines of a PG rating, Pryor has given one of his funniest movie performances yet. That may sound like faint praise on the heels of "Stir Crazy," "Bustin' Loose," and "Hero At Large," and faint it is. It is a mild disgrace that with all its resources, the film industry can't come up with a vehicle worthy of a man who is likely the most talented comedy actor of our time. Pryor plays Jack Brown, an unemployed journalist driven to hiring out first as a waitress in U.S.

Bates' (Gleason) executive dining room, then as a janitor in Bates' department store, and finally as a toy for Bates' menacing son. What the dangerously snot-nosed kid really needs is a friend, or a father. But since the latter is pre-occupied with being a mean old mogul in the one-owner town of Bates, young Eric (or "Master," if you like your jokes telegraphed) settles for the former, in the person of his hired playmate. "The Toy" is as predictable as a rerun of "My Friend Flicka." What Pryor really wants is a job on Gleason's all-white newspaper. What Schwartz really wants is a full-time dad.

What Gleason really wants is the rapport with his son that comes naturally to Pryor. THERE IS a kernel of human drama in all this, and heartstrings are shamelessly plunked from about the three-quarter mark on. But "The Toy" never really involves us emotionally, because the millionaire and his son are either too nasty or too pathetic to earn our sympathy. I don't know whether Gleason decided not to be funny in deference to Pryor, or if he simply isn't funny by comparison, but his humor and energy By JACK MATHEWS Free Press Movie Critic HOLLYWOOD I'd like to get a toy for Christmas, too. Something like a laser censor, in the shape of a cap pistol, that I could aim at movies like "The Toy" and, with one squeeze of the trigger, beam away their pretentions.

Zzzzzzzzap! Gone is Jackie Gleason and his catatonic performance as a rich, waddle-chinned ogre who can only communicate with his bratty nine-year-old son through gifts. Goodby Scott Schwartz, you little toad. If you were my kid, I'd pack you off to the humane society, as food. IKerrrrflush! the laser toilet with Carol Sobieski's dull-headed script. With bombs like this, who needs the MX? If you really want to make the Russians mdd, lob one of these into the men's room of the Kremlin.

NOW THAT only Richard Pryor Richard Pryor starts working for Jackie Gleason as a waitress. levels here would be better suited to a Tennessee Williams play than a screwball Christmas comedy. Donner has been quoted as saying that directing Pryor "was like playing four-wall handball when you're blindfolded," so rich is Pryor's gift for comic invention. Indeed, he would have had to have directed with that visual handicap not to have noticed Pryor was saving his show. Nearly every laugh in the film comes from Pryor's physical comedy.

Wheth- er he's trying to hide his mustache while serving in waitress drag, or tiptoeing through the Bates' mansion in his Spiderman underwear, Pryor is simply a funny human being. But nobody is funny enough to carry an entire movie on his own instincts, and the overall impression of "The Toy" is of a silly, noisy muddle. Once again, Hollywood has taken one of its greatest resources and wasted it. Where's my gun? XK tl mi Natje Brunkhorst makes her film debut as F. MM Movie forces mi mm lose-up look at young addicts By DIANE HAITHMAN Ffre Press Staff Writer "Christiane is a drug story a true, brutal and uglyjjne.

It's the kind of movie that won't stop until it has-forced you not only to grasp Intellectually the problem of heroin addiction, but to confront close-ups ol blunt needles forced into the pathetically skinny arjrKof teenaged prostitutes who will most likely wjmrup dead. Jt's relentless, riveting and horrible. And the fact that's a full two hours makes it even more difficult to fSEe. I Ifcstyle, Ulrich Edel's "Christiane set in West Is only slightly less unbearable than Hector Babenco's "Pixote," in which the cameras focused in a documentary-like fashion on children falling prey to th'eiriminal element in the depths of Brazil. Both have casKnot of professionals, but of regular kids who might very well find themselves lured into such terrifying, degrading positions by the pressure of their peer Tfiere's a fine art to this sort of unblinking treatment, and one can't fail to appreciate the skill, the daring, the pathos and the tragedy of such films.

But they're certainly not entertainment in the conventional sense. Unlike "Pixote," whose truths are valid but unspe-cif iC'Christiane is based on the real-life story of a 1 5-year-old girl, a former drug addict, who testified in courf, at tne trial a 50-year-old West German man who-was charged with having sexual relations with minors. HORST REICK, a magazine journalist present at the Dial, was fascinated with Christiane. He and colleague Kal Hermann later interviewed Christiane and tape-recorded 45 hours of her recollections. The storf was serialized in the German news magazine and the Solaris production company later acquired the film rights to the story and selected Ulrich Edel as its director.

Hatja Brunkhorst, a thin, waiflike teenager with longvstrlngy hair, stars as Christiane in her first film role. Both she and Thomas Haustein as her boyfriend, Detlev, turn in such realistic, heartbreaking performances It's difficult to believe, as the director has stated, that they are happy, normal children who have had no personal experience with drugs. Makeup artist Colin Arthur created the hollow-eyed pallor of the drug addicts with watercolor paint. In. between shooting up, selling their bodies to perverted strangers and dealing dope, Christiane and Detlev carry on a puppy-love romance that might have been funny in a less dangerous world.

For Christiane, her first experience with drugs comes only days after her first date. The drugs make her too weak to blow out the candles on her 14th birthday cake. The film does a good job of revealing the tensions placed on these kids by urban Get nun society they ricochet between broken homes, iirty subway stations, seamy discotheques and David Bowie concerts. It all looks suitably bleak, overcrowded and dark. Everything happens too fast.

One worries a little about the kids who star in a film which, Ideally, they shouldn't even be allowed to see. But the film never exploits them or its subject. The real Christiane F. is now off heroin and works in a Hamburg bookstore. i-nntrri i i iw niTriT' ifiiffi I'tTf i'lrr-n-mrtifffft-f nmtr fiftf-rll-'i'tiiriii iiiiiifirntnfinr-rtf'rTti mmmmmmmmmuAmstm'-Sk Innimn-irr-ii lr i i ii ii(iiiiiMiiiiaiiuiiiini''iiiiiiiBii iiiigHiiiiiiininiiiiiiia hp imiHiiii mi ill Hum mi iii api i Him mi UNDER 17 REQUIRES ACCOMPANYING PARENT OR ADULT GUARDIAN WW OuH WMiern Copr.r Copyright S) MCMLXXXII by Paramount Pictures Corporation.

All Rights Reserved NOW SHOWING 10:45 12:45 2:45 5:45 7:45 9:45 1:05 4:30 8:00 11:30 1:00 7:35 and 9:40 PM 1:00 7:35 end 9 40 PM 12:45 3:00 5:10 7:30 9:35 TIT CHRISTIANE F. i i in i rm (t) Area Theaters Christiane Natla Brunkhorst Detlev Thomas Haustein Axel Jens Kruphal Lelche Reiner Wolk Bernd Jan Georg Effler Babsl Christiane Relchell Kessl Danlela Jaeger Directed by Ulrich Edel; produced by Bernd Elchlnger and Hans Welti; screenplay by Herman Welgel (based on the book "Christiane F. Wlr Kinder Vom Bahnhof photography by Justus Pankau and Jurgen Jurges, music by David Bowie with additional music by Juergen Knleper. Running time: 124 min. In German, with subtitles.

PARENTS' GUIDE: violence, partial nudity, profanity, graphic treatment of drug abuse and prostitution. 1 :00 3:00 5:00 7:00 9:00 10:50 12:05 2:05 4:00 6:00 7 :55 9:55 Tonight at 7:40 9:40 PM 7:05 8:05 9:05 10:05 11:05 1:00 7:15 9:2011:20 1:00 7:15 9:20 11:20 also at these DRIVE INS.