Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 67

6F DETROIT FREE PRESSFRIDAY, OCTOBER 7, 1994 The heartbeats are mechanical in would-be romance Only You Mr. Right, and his name's Peter Wright (Downey). How corny is that? Of course, she doesn't realize this, so Downey spends the last third of the film and his only time on screen trying to compete with a fantasy for Faith's heart. Tomei may well be cinema's current hothouse flower, but she's yet to cash in on the promise of that Oscar. She has charm to spare.

So it's kind of sweet when Faith reassures Kate about her husband's love: "I know he'd slay tigers for you." Or when, on the cusp of sanity, she decides the best way to find her guy is to rent a van with a big speaker, drive it around Rome and page him. Sweet, but cavity-inducing. And it's hardly enough to make us believe the blank-faced Downey as a romantic lead. Even more weird is that "Only fey Anderson Jones free Press Staff Writer How desperate can a film get to tnake you fall in love with it? In "Only You," as the heroine (Marisa Tomei) chases the guy she thinks is the man of her dreams through Rome's cobbled streets, she loses her shoe. The man who wants to be the one (Robert Downey Jr.) finds it and returns it to her foot.

All while church bells chime throughout the piazza. I'm not kidding. I A die-hard romantic, Faith (Tomei) is so in love with being in love that she faints dead away at the mere mention of a man's name mystically divined years ago as her soul mate. Unfortunately, it's not the name of her prospective podiatrist husband Gohn Benjamin Hickey). A coincidental phone call days be- Marisa Tomei plays a character seeking true love in "Only Guaranteed! Home delivery by 6 a.m.

in the metropolitan detroit area. CALL 222-6500 Mystery about a pig in the pokey is just too silly It's our treat! I ir HFIfiFHRFJ During October A at Henry Ford a Greenfield 'ruas iz ana unaer, one with each paid adult admission thru October 31 a $5.75 savings. Only with this coupon. Li 1114 I I llll' I Mil 1 Mil I 'll iNI IlKli I 'I TO FEELCOOD M0lE OFTBEW am 'ONE OF THE WTLDEST MOVIES EVER1DET ttti, YOU 0KUU "WONDERROLUf FUNNY! mMP CIIS A HAGNIFICLNT PERTORMINCL'" -JcffUkt, WKHII El wi i MiiiVii DAILY AT 1 1 :30 2:1 5 8:00 1 0:45 Museum 1 Village vxi i iree cnua aamission lb ig1 lnj'MM'i i iff mm. TGOAY 1 NO PASSES OR COUPONS ACCEPTED A You," theoretically a by-the-books romantic comedy, has few real romantic moments.

Everything seems forced. To be romantic is to talk about trees and do bad Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn imitations. Three female characters in "Only You" even watch an old romantic movie misty-eyed. Please. Call it "Sleepless in Roma." Other films turn up, too.

Flecks of Jewison's Academy Award-winning "Moonstruck" shine through the cracks of this enterprise. Indeed, there are even a few parallels: the broken engagement, the unsure fiancee, an Italian sensibility. But there's no Cher, no Olympia Dukakis no real star power and no script. Guys, obviously this is the date movie of the weekend. You can see "The Specialist" next week.

Just smile, hold hands and try to laugh only when you're supposed to. ress, but little-known French singer-actress Amina Annabi gives a wooden, charmless performance. Firth's increasing vulnerability to her never makes complete sense. Neither does his budding relationship with a rich merchant, Nicol Williamson, who pulls the strings of the village judicial system from afar. Williamson, pushing hard for a speedy conviction of the pig, clearly has a vested interest in wiping the murder case off the books.

But what could that interest be? Writer-director Leslie Megahey's answer is unsatisfying; it belatedly and suddenly increases the significance of a character mostly irrelevant up to that point. Megahey uses the period costumes and sets to create a farcical atmosphere at certain points, a darkly surreal one at others. The two moods clash as "The Advocate" goes from pig roast to potboiler and overheats. it 'I I il flir lii'M, m.v for shuwiimes. IPtoK mmmimmm 2 Rated PG; mature themes, some profanity.

4: Outstanding 3: Worthy effort 2: So-so 1: A bomb fore her wedding sends Faith scurrying to Italy on a desperate manhunt with her best friend and sister-in-law Kate (Bonnie Hunt). Once in Europe, the breathtaking (and obvious) vistas of Venice, Rome and beauteous locales overlooking the Mediterranean Sea form the backdrop for the rest of the film, which looks like it was a great gig for its cast, crew and director Norman Jewison. By fate or misfortune, Faith actually bumps into The Advocate 2 Rated nudity, sexual situations, violence. 4: Outstanding 2: So-so 3: Worthy effort 1: A bomb dence to people steeped in superstition. It's an often amusing scenario, which "The Advocate" exploits for a bevy of laughs.

But it's also quite silly, and that presents a problem. As "The Advocate" tries to shift gears into a tense mystery about who really killed the boy, and as it takes on loftier sociological significance, its own set-up undercuts it. How can any viewer treat anything seriously when there's a pig in a pen at Ed Wood Depp's Wood is a fast-talking, indefatigably upbeat hustler who surmounts obstacle upon obstacle. shadowy, inky glamour. It also enables Burton to emulate and pay homage to the overwrought style of horror flicks Wood revered.

What's most significant about Burton's work here, however, is his smooth, rich storytelling. In many previous efforts, from "Batman" to "The Nightmare Before Christmas," Burton couldn't develop a narrative half as compelling as the set decoration. Even "Edward Scissor-hands," his most emotionally satisfying movie before now, felt a bit thin the characters took a backseat to the topiary. "Ed Wood" feels robust. The screenplay by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski is crowded with character-revealing moments and "A STUNNING, RIVETING FILM EXPERIENCE! Not the same old thing!" -Dennis Cunningham, CBS-TV EXTRAORDINARY! COMPLETELY ORIGINAL! Features one ot the most unforgettable characters in recent American films." -Roger Etert, CHICAGO SUN-TIMES "BRILLIANT! THIS IS A FILM YOU DO NOT WANT TO MISS!" -Gary Franklin, KCOP-TV "TWO THUMBS UP!" -SISKEl EBCRT NOW SHOWING II I SO 5 7 4' Sill in the middle of a courtroom, oinking through its own trial? The quirky, inventive story, which is actually based on historical accounts, offers intermittent pleasures.

As the public defender, played by Colin Firth, tackles a backlog of cases, he bucks up against the Old World thinking of townsfolk and must devise methods to circumvent it. Representing a woman accused of witchery, he issues a subpoena for the rats supposedly in her command. Representing a man accused of murdering his wife's lover, he focuses the court's attention on the homely woman. Could she truly have triggered rival passions in two men? When he is saddled with representing the pig, he begins to receive visits from a gypsy woman who owns and wants to reclaim the beast. The movie presents her as an irresistible tempt follies emotional epiphanies, each of which Burton deftly underlines.

When "Plan 9 from Outer Space" gets the kind of glitzy premiere Wood has long coveted, Burton uses a low-angle shot to show him loping triumphantly into the theater, his smile framed by the ornate, dazzling ceiling of a classic movie palace. "Ed Wood" ends as it begins, with a shot of the famous H-O-L-L-Y-W-O-O-D sign that hovers over Tinseltown. Burton's bittersweet movie is about some of the more unusual visions that sprout beneath it, and some of the more ardent, doomed visionaries who tend them. i til Mil; 1 I I J' "te f- Mil i 1 IV A fwv ibJ By Frank bruni Free Press Movie Critic The plot of "The Advocate" pivots bn a fascinating bit of historical trivia: In rural 15th-Century France, animals could be criminally prosecuted and punished in the same fashion as people. The opening sequence finds both a )nan and a donkey standing on the gallows for their complicity in an act of sodomy.

The man looks terrified (and duly embarrassed). The donkey looks bored. In this circumstance, as in )nany, ignorance indeed equals bliss. That sequence foreshadows more dramatic developments. A young boy is found murdered with gash marks on his body; authorities decide to arrest a pig observed running from the scene.

The swine's legal defense falls to a hew public defender who has just arrived in the village with the hope of bringing more sophisticated jurispru- Biopic boles WOOD, from Page IF Tor Johnson in a major role; "Plan 9 from Outer space (1958), an uninten tionally hilarious fantasy about grave-robbing aliens that featured some of the crudest special effects ever. Burton and his star, Johnny Dpnn Inratp Tim Burton both the humor and the pathos in the disparity between Wood's reach and his grasp, between his absurd regard for what he was doing and others' wholly understandable disdain for it. Depp is a revelation. Until this point, it's been tough to tell whether he had any real acting chops, whether his opaque detachment in "Benny and Joon" and "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" qualified as performance or pose. i But there's no mistaking his accomplishment in "Ed Wood," which finds him more animated than ever before.

Depp's Wood is a fast-talking, indefati- gably upbeat hustler who surmounts obstacle upon obstacle in pursuit of his goal. On the set, as he watches actors say words and follow paces he scripted himself, a strange rapture possesses his features. It's an expression of pure joy, and Depp captures it perfectly. There is, however, an even more noteworthy performance in "Ed Wood" Martin Landau's as Bela Lugosi. I Much of the movie concerns Wood's friendship with Lugosi, whose career is moribund by the time Wood meets him.

Wood, of course, doesn't see this; he sees only that a legendary Star can be coaxed into appearing in his movies, and he immediately commences the coaxing. Not much is needed. Lugosi desperately misses the attention he once commanded, and has been numbing his heartache with booze and morphine. The miracle of Landau's performance isn't his hilariously overripe Hungarian accent or perfect mimicry of Lugosi's mannerisms. It's the way lie manages to convey both the man's abject desperation and tenacious dignity, his awareness that he has sunk abysmally low and his willful belief that Wood can resurrect him.

The milieu these two inhabit is rounded out by a would-be transsexual named Bunny Breckinridge (Bill Murray, stealing scenes the way he did more than a decade ago in a bogus psychic named Criswell (Jeffrey Jones) and a late-night TV personality named Vampira (Lisa Marie). Their campy attire, wacky environs and B-movie props allow Burton to assemble his trademark funky images. At one point, when they've completed production of "Bride of the Monster," the motley crew holds a wrap party in a meat storehouse, where Wood dons a belly dancer's garb to twirl amid sides of beef. Burton's commercially risky decision to shoot the movie in black-and-white turns out to be an artistically prudent one. It gives "Ed Wood" both a 1950s period authentiSty and a i inn ill InWHllL pill iiiifwiiiiiii- 'mn vmwm mW' 13.

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