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Show "r r p p r p a i"' ' , Thursday, April 18, 1996 77ie Parr Record B-7 uiant peaches and brain candv &mmmmtm&. highlight this week's movie picks By Rick Brough RECORD QUEST WRITER James and the Giant Peach A wondrous-looking diversion (though not as wondrous as it hopes to be), James and the Giant Peach is the story of an orphan (Paul Terry) forced to live with two harridan aunts on an abstractly nightmarish crag. He basically given Cinderella's job description, and is forced to lick the inside of food sacks for sustenance. . James is rescued by a magical passing stranger (Peter Postlethwaite) who bestows on him a bag of glowing green squiggles called "crocodile tongues stewed in a witch's brew for 20 days and 20 nights." They result in the appearance appear-ance of a lone peach, which soon grows to gigantic proportions. The boy finds a portal inside the fruit (at this point becoming a stop-motion stop-motion animated figure) and forms a friendship with five human-sized insects living inside, just in time for the peach to roll downhill into the ocean. The peach becomes a ship (and then a fruity dirigible, harnessed har-nessed to 100 seagulls) as the group sails off for the Emerald uh, I mean New York City. Adapted from Roald Dahl's story and brought to life by director direc-tor Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas), the film is a fantastical fan-tastical beauty. Every still could be placed in a child's picture book, and the big screen makes the most of its various settings a golden beach setting where James lives with his parents (before they're taken away by the "black rhino" who appears amid storm clouds); the peach's interior, which can be both dining room and dinner to boot; and a frozen ship's-graveyard. The characters are played with great gusto, but that seems to be compensation for the fact that they're rather flatly written. Two of the insects are voiced by famous names, who rely little on their usual screen personalities. Susan Sarandon is the Transylvanian-accented Transylvanian-accented spider; Richard Dreyfuss's vocals are unrecognizable playing a centipede who sounds like a Brooklyn cabbie. (Is there an unwitting in-joke, in that the centipede cen-tipede is menaced by a shark?) The other mem.b.ets of the "crew" include an archly British grasshopper grasshop-per (Simon Callow), a meek earthworm earth-worm (David Thewlis) and a glow worm (Miriam Margoyles). The two most prominent live actors (Margoyles, in person this time, and Joanna Lumley, as the aunts, Sponge and Spiker) pull out all the stops, as if they were going for top grades in Witchy Behavior 101. As a child's story, it's pleasant enough, but it doesnt have that special spark of imagination. (To get an idea of the difference, compare com-pare the timid earth worm to the the same character with a twist " ' """"""" ' Li li K ) n ijiu ilis&sr' wan ftvai? iiMiiiliiJ A lonely boy named James finds some unusual friends and unexpected adventures when he climbs inside a giant peach and sets sail for New York City in James and the Giant Peach. the neurotic T. Rex of Toy Story.) As for James, the young hero, he's written as if he came off a touring company of Oliver down to his woeful, off-key song number early in the picture. The writing features an occasional occa-sional bright line (when one insect throws himself into danger, another yells, "He's committing pesticide!"). pest-icide!"). Randy Newman's bouncy songs are instantly forgettable and sound mostly like variations on "You've Got a Friend in Me." I can't say that James and the Giant Peach is for "children of all ages." It's for children of an age up to 7 or 8 and for those with an affection for Roald Dahl's work. As for me, I'll rent a Wallace and Gromit video, or a Ray Harryhausen flick, the next time I need a dose of stop-motion animation. anima-tion. The Kids in the Hall; Brain Candy 172 I haven't seen the HBO series featuring the Canadian comedy troupe Kids in the Hall, so my jury is still out on them. Are they an acquired taste, or just tasteless? Will they become a mainstream success hke Monty Python, or a cult group like Firesign Theatre (where it is seemingly helpful to be on some sort of medication in order to "get" the humour)? Their debut film Brain Candy is more funny-strange than funny-ha-ha, but with TV sketch-comedy sputtering out at the moment, the film's worth a look if you're trying to find a provocative new satirical vision. The Brain Candy of the title is a feel-good pill invented by a young idealistic scientist (Kevin LARGE SELECTION OF COFFEE DINING ROOM ROOT BASES 1 "lefiV- J fiCf" BENT LOG DESIGN-TROLLEY SQUARE 602 EAST 500 SOUTHSALT LAKE CITY 1-800-236-8564 1-801-521-5551 Answers to last week's puzzle El NO i MlMaI1 l.lQlNl.UnB N E 81 If n it 1 1 1 11 1 w I I M I ill L sPim u k e siif i I A I a i - ri-nnrrrmisnMUiRiiiEiniHiTM imi 1 1 1, f i i i i t i i ii m wm i iHjIo mIm o IN I" VCI1 ' ' i -i- I r-n i i -m i i i i EIVIJO vriE i ZJl p OT 8 I 1 1 1R I 8 K IE 3 T T 8 A II II DRIEST K 8 MacDonald) in order to treat clinical clini-cal depression. The pill plunges people back into the memory of their happiest moment, which in most cases is pathetically meager. A blowsy middle-aged woman remembers her youth on the disco floor, dancing to "Funkytown." An elderly women remembers her son and his family making a two-minute two-minute visit to her house for the holidays ("I hear Dad died Oh, is that eggnog?"). Unfortunately, the medication is commandeered by a soul-less corporate cor-porate head (Mark McKinney) who's looking for a follow-up to his last pill-sized confection, Stummies (a cross between stunned and yum-mies?). yum-mies?). The new pill is mass-marketed under the name Gleemonex ("It's always 72 degrees in your head."), and MacDonald discovers the pill's side-effects cause Happy Comas, in which victims, frozen in place like lawn jockeys, replay their happiest moment over and over. The film delivers a serious message: mes-sage: It's wrong, even dangerous to look for nothing but happy vibes in life which is mixed in, of course, ; with a lot of gross, juvenile gags. Such as? Little boys look up the dress of an old lady in a Happy Coma. Employees do obscene things to their boss's capuccino before serving serv-ing it to him. One tasteless gag (which is still funny) shows a cop flicking on the light at a city park restroom, sending a horde of guilty-looking guilty-looking guys bolting out into the night. There's a number of gay-oriented burlesque gags running through the picture, most centered on Scott Thompson, the openly gay member of the troupe, playing a suburban father who refuses to admit he's homosexual. (His shrink advises him, "Everyone knows it; your family knows it; dogs know it.) When he finally exits the closet, he leads his neighbors in a little musical musi-cal parade down the street. The movie reminded me of my early days watching Monty Python, as I tried to tell the players apart, as they scrambled in and out of multiple roles, and especially worked a lot in drag. (The Pythons . acted like they were properly uptight up-tight and corseted. The Kids look creepily as if they're starting to enjoy it.) Kevin MacDonald is itchy and hapless as the young scientist; did-nt did-nt spot him in any of his other guises. Dave Foley (star of the current cur-rent TV series Newsradio) appears in his major role as an obedient corporate weasel. Mark McKinney is like a combo of Donald Trump and Ed Sullivan, as the mogul who's overjoyed that his new drug is more popular than penicillin. In drag, he has a particularly particu-larly loony gleam in his eye. And Doug McCulloch is the utility player, play-er, who appears as everybody from a girlish lab assistant to a sullen suicide sui-cide rocker. The film's humour is wildly uneven, from insightful to bitter to droll to obnoxious. And I'm not sure if audiences will cotter to the Kids' collective personality. Whereas the Pythons were articulately, articu-lately, intensely bizarre, and the SNL crew in recent years were into frat-boy humour, the Kids mostly play characters who look like they're slowly coming unhinged. They're subtly narcotized, as if they're going to float away at any moment as indeed, one character does at the film's climax. Willi hi "ft W cr. CffiflfcnQlHD If you don't stop someone from driving drunk, who will? Do whatever ii takes. The New York Times Crossword Puzzle No. 0414 CENTENNIALS Br Henry Hook Edited by will Shortz across I Pronto i. 4 Letterman's turf 7 Pretty, in ancient Rome 12 Summerhouse IS Perfume label word 19 Clinton Cabinet member 21 Wanted poster datum 22 Rant about 23 Sen. grp. 24 Headline of January 1896 27 Chair style 29 Excite, in slang 30 Some people take a shine to it 31 "Peter Pan" dog 32 Be of importance, old-style 34 Public relations concern 37 Yawner's feeling 39 Quaff introduced in 1896 42 Cordage grass 46 Pouch 47 Yippee!" 48 They're helpless 50 Corn byproduct 51 Hardly gregarious 52 Officeholder? 55 Neighbor of B.C. 56 The Reader (1990's magazine) 57 Richie's dad, to Fonzie 58 1896 dramatic work 62 Marquand sleuth 64 Cheek-related 66 Longtime Philly conductor 67 Architect I. M. 68 "Not that again!" 70 Wearer of pointy footgear 71 Unisex garb 75 Gunk 76 Washington Monument, e.g. 80 Soap Box Derby site 81 1951 Lanza role 84 Her advice column debuted in 1896 87 Oklahoma city 88 Book after Joel 89 Bed size 91 Dutch treat 92 Jam ingredient? 93 Book course 94 Yellow Sea port 98 Skedaddled 100 The Birth of a Nation grp. 101 Product of the rumor mill 103 1896 event, absent since A.D.394 107 "All Is the Girl" CGypsy" ong);., 109 Shouted 110 Through 111 Patches things up? 114 Antlered beasts 116 Individual 1 18 Green-skinned pear 121 It was the talk of Chicago, July 1896 126 Stomach muscles 127 Yearbook 128 Bye at the French Open? 129 Nonpayment result 130 Boulogne business abbr. 131 Give the same old story 132 Goalie's stats 133 Aachen article 134 Chess pes. DOWN 1 Invigorates, with "up v 2 Appointment 3 First Ford auto, completed in 1896 4 Brittle 5 Put on the line 6 Catch 7 Tropical trees 8 Ivy Leaguer 9 Kind of algebra: Abbr. 10 Colleen 11 Soap title start 12 Tradables introduced in 1896 13 Sports org. 14 Youth-and-old-ge,e.g. 15 Literary pseudonym 16 Kind of companion 17 Choreographer White 20 Start of the "flying down" song 25 Doorframe part 26 Square 28 N.R.C. forerunner 33 He played TVs Mike Hammer 35 Prizm, e.g. 36 Wetwiggler 38 Boom times 39 "Oklahoma!" star 40 "The Bronx Zoo" author 41 Explorer Amundsen 43 Old Sunday paper section 44 Salon application 43 Remedy for dry toast 46 Super Bowl XXI M.V.P. 49 In a bad way 53 Equi- 54 In accordance with 56 Inuit craft 58 Small combos 59 Muslim bigwig 60 Noted name in wine 61 Out of shape 63 Stop worrying 65 Black mm l 55 L I mV 1 - 101 103 H I iii in in fjiu" ntf lit FFH II Ml Ml IIS III 1 17 M Wl M M 17 In 1 Too LT!" m 5 6972 Snacks introduced in 1896 73 Brownies 74 Lewis Carroll's Boojum 76 Valhalla V.I.P. 77 Beat it 78 Yon maiden 79 Marlowe contemporary 81 A little lower 82 "What mind reader?" 83 Campus mil. grp. 83 Jeanne 88 Erstwhile larva 90 Nowhere near 94 Shipping unit 95 Mom's specialty 96 Scottish river 97 Casus (legal situation) 99 Hogan dwellers 102 Something to sneeze at 104 Incubator noise 105 Sluggard 106 Chaps 108 "The Dancing Class" artist 111 Rumble reminder 112 Piscivorous flyer 113 Practice 115 Pop 117 Satellite broadcast 119 Last writes? 120 Versatility list 122 Erie Canal mule 123 Actress Ullmann 124 Inferior mark 125 Number-cruncher Get answers to any three clues by touch-tone phone: 1-900-420-5656 (750 per minute). t.Jff ill rift r if |