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Show " Meell Won-M hy Rick Itrough Comics go serious in two new films Firstborn ' aThe Razor's Edge Generally, it is not considered very unusual when a dramatic actor goes comic (though John Gielgud would certainly attract attention if he hosted "Saturday Night Life"). People are far more interested when a comic actor attempts a dramatic role. Will the actor overcome your impulse to laugh when you first see him? Will he push too far toward a serious tone, or not far enough? Can he use elements of his comic personality to create a dramatic character? Recent movies have given us two examples. Teri Garr gives her best performance in "Firstborn," while Bill Murray is underwhelming in "The Razor's Edge." "Firstborn" is a suburban melodrama that works because of a script that allows for good performances. perfor-mances. The central character is an older brother (Christopher Collet) whose neck hairs rise when his divorced, lonely mother takes up with a thoroughly disreputable lover. Sam (Peter Weller) talks a good line about his past businesses, his ' baseball career and his plans for a restaurant with Mom's money, but it soon becomes apparent that his source of income (and chief recreation) is drugs. The son is the one who has to deal with the three other important players the desperate, disbelieving mother; an impatient little brother (Corey Haim) who wants to run away from the situation; and the lover, whose thin layer of geniality is rapidly flaking away. All the actors are good, especially Weller as one of the most loathsome villains of the year. His coldness, which made him wrong to play the hip hero Buckaroo Banzai, is perfect for the brutal Sam. But Teri Garr holds a great deal of the picture together. The son cannot win until she recognizes what a heel her lover is. Garr can show you that she's desperately wrong-headed here, and still get your sympathy when she angrily tells her son, "Let me be happy." There's not an ounce of the flightiness that she uses in her comic roles. Garr is known primarily as a comic actress for "Young Frankenstein" and "Tootsie." (Does anyone besides me remember she was one of the goofy supporting players in the old Sonny and Cher TV show?) But she's also a character actress, playing exasperated, bedraggled housewives in "The Black Stallion" and "Close Encounters." What "Firstborn" shows is that she's been a vastly under-rated actress, and is only beginning to bloom. Bill Murray, on the other hand, has played only daffy characters in the movies but has certainly handled serio-comic moments well on "Saturday "Satur-day Night Live. ' ' I still think he could tackle a dramatic role. His failure in "Razor's Edge" isn't sloppy. He had a strategy that didn't work. In an adaptation of the Somerset Maugham novel, Murray plays Larry Darrell, a well-off middle-class young man who goes off to fight in World War I, and changes course because of the horrors he sees. He devours philosophy in a Paris garret, takes humble jobs, even goes to a Tibetan monastery to seek the . Meaning of Life. But his lesson isn't really learned until he faces the people left behind in his old life: a rich friend (James Keach) buried in the 1929 Crash; his wife (Catherine Hicks), the fiancee Larry left behind for the. contemplative contempla-tive life; and Sophie (Theresa Russell), the old girlfriend now on the skids in Paris af'er the death of hor husband and child. You're surprised to find that Larry (as written by Murray and director John Byrun) does a lot of droll, hip wisecracking, as if Murray were back in "Ghostbusters." Actually, there's a difference. Larry makes jokes with a melancholic air, as if the jibes are just barely fighting off despair. It's possible Murray didn't want to create a character miles away from his comic personality he wanted to show its darker side. But sadly, this doesn't work. The character seems too modem for its era. And given the strong identification identifica-tion with Murray the Funnyman, we just see the wisecracks, not the haunted side of his character. Other actors in the film do better, especially Theresa Russell as the tormented Sophie. Catherine Hicks is a fine girl-next-door-gone-spoiled. Ironically, one of the better character performances comes from Murray's older brother Brian Doyle-Murray. Doyle-Murray. He was a "Saturday Night" regular who never developed a star following, but in this movie, it pays off for him. As Larry Darrell's dour World War CO., he has complete, . comfortable conviction. Bill Murray has the range to do . drama, but unlike his brother and Teri Garr, he hasn't found the formula yet. |