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Show MeeH WowrM The Newspaper Thursday, July 24, 1980 Page 15 by lliek Brough and Richard Barnum-Reece 'OH, Heavenly Dog' A Real Puppy A Classic Recommended Good Double feature material Time-Killer For masochists only These days, an "innovative" "in-novative" picture is one that doesn't feature a memLr of the Saturday Night Live Prime Time Players. If you count revivals of "Animal House" and "Meatballs," you'll find 9 or 10 comedies in the theaters this summer with SNL alumni, influenced by their so-called "college fraternity" humour. Chances are most of them will fail to carve out a career viable either financially or artistically in the movies. The SNL crowd is too much like those graduates of "Laugh-In" (Arte Johnson, Judy Carne, Joanne Worley) who left the show with cocky expectations, and are now selling toilet tissue and playing "Cross Wits" on TV. Their success at ensemble-revue humour didn't prepare them for the task of sustaining an entire movie, and the characters they popularized (Johnson's dirty old man in the park) couldn't be sustained for two hours in a theater. Furthermore, their familiar gambits were only funny within the intimacy in-timacy of TV Judy Carne's perennial fear that an offscreen off-screen bucket of water would "sock it to me;" of, Belushi's faintly bullying relationship with his audien- ce. Thus far, the Prime Tim ers haven't proved any one of them can carry a film. The practice has been to put these ensemble performers in ensemble movies loaded with guest, stars (Loraine Newman in "Wholly Moses," Belushi and Akroyd in "1941.") Belushi fit well into John Landis' "Animal House" when he could be a key, but not central performer. perfor-mer. In "The Blues Brothers," Landis can't convince us his stars are the main characters, so he fills in with Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin and a demolition derby. There are a hai dful of the TV graduates who might make it. Henry Gibson and Lily Tomlin both got a helping hand from Robert Altman. Bill Murray has powered his way through a Company's Coming The Kimball Art Center Park City Players production produc-tion of "Company" will be held August 8, 9 and 10 in the theater at Winters Middle School, and on August 15 and 16 as a dinner theater at the Holiday Inn. Tickets are $3 for Kimball Art Center members, and $4.50 for non-members for the opening weekend. Dinner theater prices are $14.50 for Kimball Art Center members mem-bers and $16 for non-members. non-members. The cast of "Company" includes a number of names and faces that will be familiar to Park City Players audiences. Randy Barton played a Russian soldier in "Fiddler on the Roof." Quint Bishop starred in last summer's production of "Romanoff and Juliet" and was featured in both "Oliver" and "Fiddler." Quint is a theater major at the University of Utah and will be seen this fall in Pioneer Memorial Theater's production of "Twelfth Night." Gary Cole recently won the Park City Players award as Best Supporting Actor in a Musical for his roles in "Oliver" and "Fiddler." "Fid-dler." Don Gomes, theater director for the Kimball Art Center, makes his first Park City Players appearance as an actor. Val Thurnell sold posies in "Oliver" and played the oldest daughter in couple of bad movies through force of sheer gall. And Chevy Chase, the first star to leave Saturday Night, has been fortunate in his film vehicles and co-stars, up to and including Benji in Oh! Heavenly Dog. ( h) What? There's actually something good about the idea of Chevy Chase as a London private eye who gets knifed on a case, and comes back as that insufferably cute ball of fur? Well, yes. The total incongruity of the idea makes it work. If it is a come-down for Chase, it's also a switch for Benji to be standing there, thinking "Oh, Shit!" (Chase in voice-over) voice-over) or gazing at his newly-adopted newly-adopted mistress (Jane Seymour) in the shower with what appears to be genuinely horny glee. Both stars rely on hints and implications. Benji, like every dog we've ever owned, allows us to read emotions into his mug, and an important impor-tant part of Chase's appeal has always been that solemn poker face that conceals strange and bizarre things going on behind it. Despite the astounded comments in the PR release that Benji "really does look like Chevy Chase," there are too many times when the loving dewy-eyed closeups on the dog's face don't match up with the thoughts you're hearing. It's better to see, in longshot, Benji getting kicked out of a hotel head over heels, hear Chase saying "Thank you. Enjoyed it!" (classic Gerald Fordian nonchalance) and just imagine the dog's expres sion .' Seymour, as the journalist probing the case, and Omar Sharif, as the chief suspect, are capable in more straightforward roles. The actors, plus the fantasy premise, manage to make an absorbing movie out of what is really, after all, a pretty shabby whodunit. Still, I can't recommend "Oh, Heavenly Dog" to anyone with a low threshold for Cute. I'm hoping for better bet-ter things from yet another Chase movie "Caddy-shack," "Caddy-shack," to be unleashed soon with Bill Murray, Rodney Rod-ney Dangerfield, Ted Knight (both of them former SNL hosts) and written by four old writers from National Lampoon, whose style inspired in-spired SNL in the first place. Just spare us the food fights. "Fiddler." Pat Whitfield was seen as the ghostly grandma Tzeitel in "Fiddler." "Fid-dler." New talent (as least new to Park City) is included in this show: Tom Costello, a newcomer to Park City, has had extensive theater experience ex-perience in Idaho and is a theater major. Joyce Plowman, a longtime Park City resident, will make her Park City Players debut. A crew of Salt Lake City talent includes Mark Horrocks, Rhonda Miller, Amy Marie Rose and Anne Wetzel. All have extensive experience in University of Utah productions and ai. Lagoon Opera House. Johnathan Gochberg, who previously served as musical director in "Oliver" and "Fiddler," is directing "Company." Johnathan has directed and played in over 40 shows at the University of Utah and other locations in Salt Lake City. In addition, he has appeared in . the television series "Lucas Tanner." Johnathan is currently a Masters candidate can-didate in theater at the University of Utah. He will appear this fall in Pioneer Memorial Theater's production produc-tion of "Twelfth Night." Tickets for "Company" are now on sale at the Kimball Kim-ball Art Center. Call 649-8882 for reservations. KPCW Memorial Bldg. Park City 649-9004 (Q)Mickics The Big One ( ',2 tentative) Directed Direc-ted by Samuel Fuller the first film he's done since the gritty B-movie melodramas made about 20 years ago that gained him a cult following. Fuller is one of those underground un-derground geniuses that film aficionados have discovered as if through a divining rod; you're not sure the talent really exists, or if it's just snake oil. The Big Red One displays artistry, sure enough, but it's like a painter of small canvases who suddenly has a mural thrust upon him. The story has been Fuller's dream project for years the WWII chronicle of a top sergeant (Lee Marvin) and the only four members of his squad (Mark Hamill, Robert Carradine, Bobby DiCiccio, Kelly Ward) to survive from the North Africa landings in '42 to the liberation of a Czechoslavakian death camp in 1945. The tone is business-like and episodic war as a job of work with one incident following another. If Fuller summons up any kind of feeling for his lot, it is gentle, cruel irony starting with the 1918 prologue where the younger Marvin Knives a German, then finds the war has been over for four hours. But Fuller has trouble rendering ren-dering all the details of his mural; because of the ground he has to cover, the war is just one beach-head after another. Without the hurry-up-and-wait moments between battles, there is none of the numbing tensions between blood and boredom that others have told us about. Fuller doesn't wallow in horrors of combat, matter of fact, he's oddly reticent about showing them, as if he were still bound by Hollywood's old censorship codes. The photography is excellent, and the performances perfor-mances from Marvin and crew are uniformly lean and terse, but there's something missing. We .iope next week to discuss it a little more fully. Oieech & Chong's Next Movie ( ) Glad you told us. We thought it was Abbott and Costello's last one. The movie is basically a string of routines: Cheech and Chong coping with the rent bill, annoying an-noying their obnoxious neighbor, blundering into a Mash Words Science is always coming up with some new development to ease the afflictions of modern life. They've come up with featherless chickens, five-year light bulbs, and a deodorant that for the first time makes it possible for a human being to fly a supersonic jet and yet never shower before takeoff. Scientific discovery hits different people different ways. Some people laugh it off, others just smile bravely and turn away. And then there are people like Harry who see in it the promise of a better life. Harry took to the idea of genetic engineering the same way he took to the electric elec-tric weedeater he wanted to try it out on somebody right away. The day genetic engineers announced that they had a line on a possible cure for the common cold, Harry exploded out of the low end of a manic-depressive swing with some of the old suddenness he used to show out on the golf course when addressing the ball with the toe of his cleated white bucks. In all his life Harry has never had to tangle with a really serious sinus block, but he figures if he can fake horticulture he can fake a cold sore. As Harry explained it to me over the back fence the other day, genetic engineering has more on its mind than test tube babies and biological warfare. Plant biologists are using it to create new forms of life where it really counts as far as Harry is concerned out in the tobacco fields of America's great nicotine belt. What these people are doing, Harry said, is they're fusing the cells of a human being with the cells of a tobacco plant. The idea, the way he understands it, is not Bel Air mansion, starting a riot in a night club in other words, the kind of situations that have long served comedy teams well. The old jokes have grown long hair and started smoking pot. Some of the jokes are gross, some are grossly funny (Chong playing his electric guitar at a sound level that wilts grass and injures unborn un-born children) and some are just exhausting. C & D's loony drug patter ("Oh, wow, man," etc.) wears out its welcome faster than any other comedic style around. The Empire Strikes Back ('2) George Lucas, director Irvin Ker-shner Ker-shner and their crew have given us action, inventiveness inven-tiveness and high spirits in even greater abundance than "Star Wars," mixed with a new, somber tone that strikes our emotions at surprising sur-prising depths. But this newfound new-found seriousness comes close to being a downer, and even worse, the picture leaves us with three or four important plot threads twisting slowly, slowly in the wind (especially a shocking revelation about Luke and Darth Vader.) The action swings from a hair-raising chase through an asteroid belt to a shoot-out with an Imperial Force of long-legged long-legged elephantine tanks, and throws a few new characters along the way, like ruthless bounty hunter Babo Fett, and Lando Kalrissian, Han Solo's ex-partner ex-partner (Billy Dee Williams.) But Frank Oz easily steals the show, operating and speaking for the Jeddhi Dwarf, Yoda, who further instructs Luke in the ways of the Force. One is torn between admiration for the picture's blooming air of maturity, and irritation at the way this tone is used to get us eagerly salivating already! for ' the next sequel. At the Holiday Village. Mary Poppins ( 2) The spoonful of sugar could use a little spice. Without it, the joyousness that marks any great musical is, in "Poppins," mere cheeriness. No doubt, Walt Disney filled the picture pic-ture with lively animation, inventive special effects, and lovely music. It's just that the characters are not by Jack escially memorable not the prim Mary (Julie Andrews An-drews won an Oscar for this?) nor the stuffy father (David Tomlinson) or two children (Matthew Garber, Karen Dotrice) she brings together. Dick Van Dyke, in the dual role of chimney sweep and skinflint bank president is the best performer perfor-mer on hand. The songs by the Sherman brothers are all fine; but somehow it's appropriate ap-propriate that the most beautiful (the Birdwoman's song) is also the most overlooked. The whole movie is kind-of-califragilisticexpealidocious. At Holiday Village. My Bodyguard () What was that all about? asks Clifford Peache's chauffeur, after he sees young Cliff pursued out of school by a gang of senior-grade senior-grade toughs. "It's just some kids from school who want to kill me," he answers. Melvin Moody (Matt Dillon) and his gang collect protection money from the class shrimps on the premise they're "guarding" them against Ricky Linderman (Adam Baldwin), a sullen giant with an awesome but shadowy reputation for raping teachers and blowing kids' brains out. Cliff (Chris Makepeace) sees through the false image, and he turns the tables on the bullies by making Linderman his "bodyguard;" what he discovers about the real Ricky forms the basis for a warm friendship and one of this summer's most memorable pictures. Writer Chris Ormsby and director Tony Bill have brilliantly summoned up our worst adolescent fears about school bullies and the problem of standing up to them. And along the way to its simplistic, if rousing climax, it probes the David-and-Goliath friendship that forms the real core of the film a relationship etched with humour, feeling and a performance of gripping volnerability by Adam Baldwin. The picture's main weakness is the way it pads out the plot (and promotes the picture) with a star-name star-name adult sub-plot about Cliff's grandmother (Ruth Gordon) and his hotel-manager hotel-manager father (Martin Mull) that has nothing to do with the movie. Rash so much to come up with a product that combines com-bines the best features of a Cuban cigar with all the advantages of motor responses and a membership at the club, although there might be a market for something like that. What you're really after and here's where the genius of the method reveals itself you want to breed a little DNA and human hormones into in-to the tobacco plant, nourish it with a disease-fighting disease-fighting drug, and harvest a leaf that has all the impact of a dose of Nyquil plus the benefits of an unfiltered Camel. Not only would this free modern civilization from the costly burdens of sick leave and nasal spray but it-would release people like Harry from the shame of a double life. Harry is a semi-x-smoker. He gave up smoking in the eyes of the world and his wife, but rediscovered it about the same time that he discovered the satisfactions of the organic method of gardening. One of the chief delights of organic gardening is that you have to check the garden every night sometimes two or three times a night for squash beetles and hookworms. You don't want to use a spray on them because a spray would only kill them. Dead bugs are useless for the purposes of a regular nightly patrol. Harry keeps his Marlboros behind the manure tea. With the Surgeon General planning on an early retirement, all Harry has to do now is leave himself open for cold germs. He plans to do this by smoking a lot behind the shed and using up all his vitamin C. If the people of Brookhaven come through on schedule, Harry figures that by 1985 he can give up petunias and take up smoking for his health. 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