Note: movie ratings are out of a possible ***** as follows:

* is lousy
** is ok
*** is good
**** is very good
***** is outstanding

May 1, 1999
by He Jung Kim

We've finally hit May, and for avid filmgoers that translates into three things: lining up for Star Wars, Star Wars the second time at half-price nights, Star Wars on DVD! Unfortunately we are still 2 1/2 weeks away from opening night and what's worse, until then there's hardly anything remotely comparable playing in the theaters! Perhaps the key to being entertained by the big screen until May 19th is to not expect very much from the current movies in release.

Life

If life is beautiful in Roberto Benigni's depiction of the Jewish holocaust, it can also be funny and touching in Ted Demme's new movie Life, starring Eddy Murphy and Martin Lawrence. After all, if anyone can bring humor to a wrongful life imprisonment in a state penitentiary in Mississippi during the "dirty thirties," it's Eddy Murphy. Life is a comedy with subtle undertones of sentimentality as a story of friendship, hardship and survival unfolds.

Murphy and Lawrence are two shady characters from Harlem desperately seeking to make ends meet amid the depressed ‘30s. When caught without the money they each owe a wealthy Cotton Club owner, they resort to transporting moonshine from the home of "white-only pies" Mississippi back to Harlem. Only, they get framed for the murder of a white gambling con artist and both end up sentenced for life in a prison where there are no walls, but secured by societal racism and a sense of defeat among the black inmates.

Although slightly drawn out at times, Life is consistent in its humor. Murphy is privy to all is usual fast-talking, foul-mouthedness, but Beverly Hill's Cop he is not. In fact, there's a sense of maturity in his comic delivery, and he certainly cannot be criticized for making this movie a one-man show. Lawrence seems to feed off of Murphy's unexpected onstage timesharing and manages to pull off a very likeable portrayal of a black man vying for respectability in a racist society that refuses to cut him a break.

What is surprising about Life is that it may be considered Murphy's first film, as opposed to a movie venture. As pretentious as this may sound, it must be noted that Life contains some creative use of film techniques and story telling lacking in Murphy's past works. Most of the drama in Life derives from the historical setting of the movie. Hardship due to racism is clearly demonstrated by prison life in the South, but Demme also secures the film's authenticity by showing how racism survived most historical achievements of the last sixty years. He does this with a mini montage of real media footage covering events such as WWII, Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech and JFK. Furthermore, juxtaposing shots of the prison as several aging inmates literally fade out from the shots creates a sense of time wasted and lives lost in captivity. All this in conjunction with special make-up effects provided by Rick Baker (The Nutty Professor) add realism to this film and may even render Murphy and Lawrence dramatic actors. Though Life may not seem like a $75-million production, it is ***1/2 level viewing.

Never Been Kissed

Never Been Kissed is a fairytale comedy of the most delusional kind. If there ever was a moral intended to this story, it went completely unnoticed by the theaterful of teenage girls gushing and cheering throughout as Drew Barrymore charmed her way out of a potentially harmful portrayal of a high-school geek turned Miss Prom Queen 1999.

Like Barrymore herself, her character, Josie Geller, is desperate to shed her past image. Josie failed socially in high school, and although now a successful copy editor for the Chicago Sun-Times, tries for a second, cooler adolescence when assigned as an undercover writer investigating today's teenagers. Having already sailed through Shakespeare as well as calculus during her own high-school years, Josie's intelligence instantaneously marks her a target for ridicule and ostracism from the in crowd. She is further peer-pressured as the editors at the Sun-Times, interested only in covering the popular, good-looking kids at school, dismiss the camaraderie and acceptance Josie finds among her math-whiz friends.

With films like Ever After and the The Wedding Singer, Barrymore proved to Hollywood that she could be sweet and innocent, funny and capable of drawing a large following without resorting to unsolicited flashing of her chest. Josie Geller, however, is not as convincing in her transformation. In her journey from plain and different to cool and popular, Josie experiments with drugs, trades brains for dates and even ends up in a mild seduction of her English teacher. Is that what really makes you cool in high school and consequently in the adult workforce?

Following diligently in the pattern set by most teenage-date films, Never Been Kissed has a painful cafeteria scene, an open-house trash/party, a prom, a dance sequence, a consolation-prize love interest, etc. Had director, Raja Cosnell cast anyone else other than Barrymore for the leading role, this movie would not have survived more than two weeks in the theaters. Mediocre performances from Boogie Nights' John C. Reilly and Courtney Cox's David Arquette make Never Been Kissed a **1/2 movie.

Goodbye Lover in two words or maybe less….

Goodbye Lover opened at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival, but it wasn't released until now. Why? A good guess would be that Warner Brothers took nearly a year to piece together a promotional trailer to market this film as slick, ultra-sexy and dark enough to satisfy an audience willing to forgive Don Johnson for bringing pastels into our closets.

Personally, I expected a lot more from the director of The Scarlet Letter, Roland Joffe. Complex plot twists, quirky characters, seduction and femme fatales all have their place in a morbid tale of the money-hungry, rich and conniving. However, the mediocre, triple-crossing murder plot and the made-for-TV-funny Ellen Degeneres dominate the movie to such a degree that most of Patricia Arquette's hard work as the blond-bombshell seductress becomes boring. A word of advice to the three co-writers: Church-going is a transparent disguise for conservatism, leather lingerie is so commonplace it's hardly considered a fetish, and as for astute detectives incessantly chewing on pieces of food while simultaneously solving the mystery, hasn't Kojak put that stereotype to rest in the 70s? Goodbye Lover is a disappointing *1/2 effort.

Entrapment

Entrapment, starring Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones, just opened last night, and we're just back from the opening screening. This is the kind of movie that defies plausibility and pushes impossibility to new limits. Realism? Hardly, but still it's a joy to watch. It may be billed as a suspense thriller, but have no doubt, this movie is really about Catherine Zeta-Jones (The Mask of Zorro) slithering and snaking her way in skintight clothes through laser-beam security while Connery ogles her in a much-less-than-grandfatherly type of way. You better believe that this is going to be every guy's movie pick for the weekend. And you got to give it to the first Bond-man, Sean Connery -- he sets new records for Hollywood age-range seduction. What is he, triple her age? No matter, this is high-end Hollywood entertainment with seduction, suspense and big-screen special-effects that will light your pants on fire. After director Jon Amiel's abysmal The Man Who Knew Too Little, I thought they shouldn't let him behind a camera again; however, Entrapment is well worth seeing and worthy of *** rating.

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