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Show 'Admirer' treats parents well, 'Girls' have limited charm Left to right: Fred Ward, Leigh Taylor-Young, Dee Wallace Stone and Cliff De Young are parents caught in a rectangular triangle in "Secret Admirer." Many of the films you've read about in the quickies movie reviews now are availbale on video cassettes. casset-tes. To refresh your memory of those movies, entertainment critic Rick Brough has recycled his capsule summaries and lists some current video offerings below. Secret Adm irpr I like "Secret Admirer" if only because it introduces a beer-guzzling, beer-guzzling, food-snarfing slob and his raunchy buddies and then safely tucks them away as supporting characters. In this movie, even the parents have more screen time than the food fighters. The movie is cast in the mold of romantic "complication" comedy. The young hero (C. Thomas Howell) receives an anonymous love letter that he assumes is from the blonde princess (Kelly Preston) he adores. This is not good news for two other people: the blond's jealous college boyfriend (Scott McGinnis) and the hero's brunette friend (Lori Laughlin), who is the real author of theletter. Laughlin is so masochistically selfless that she writes anonymous letters to the blonde on behalf of the boy! While this four-sided triangle is going on, another one is being, created around four parents. The anonymous letters start circulating, cir-culating, and cause the boy's father (Cliff DeYoung) and the blonde's number of obstacles to overcome, including in-cluding a rich-bitch rival (Holly Gagnier), who tries to buy the contest, con-test, and a military father (Ed Lauter ) , who doesn't approve. And she's initially cool to the lower-class guy assigned as her partner, played by Lee Montgomery. Mont-gomery. One character calls it "Rebel Without a Cause Meets Sound of Music." If you predicted love blooms between bet-ween the odd couple, maybe you've seen this kind of movie before. Parker and Helen Hunt, as her bosom buddy, are likable, and in a few scenes are so exuberant, it's like artificial respiration for the tired plot. Montgomery, a pudgy child actor in the '60s, now is a good muscular young actor. But the story is predictable. Even worse, it has one of those major scenes based on the warped moral idea that any abuse of adults and rich folks is OK. The bitch's coming-out coming-out party is trashed by a gang of punkers and blatant vandalism is presented as good, clean fun. i2Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning Say it ain't so. In Part IV, young Danny killed off the unstoppable hockey-mask killer, Jason, but was left haunted and disturbed by the experience. ex-perience. Now the teenage Danny, still haunted and disturbed, has been shipped to a countryside home for emotionally troubled kids, conve niently close to the old Camp Crystal Lake territory. The murders begin again, with the usual encyclopedic assortment of hardware tools utilized as weapons. The most unusual item this time around: a highway flare. The actors, as always, are disposable. If one shows a little ' charisma or has some character development, this doesn't keep them from being sliced, diced, dismembered or shish-kebobed seconds later. The victims include young lovers, a piggy teenager, a morbid ambulance am-bulance attendant, and two backwoods hicks who give new dimensions to the concepts, of slovenliness and bad acting. The only point of interest here is the mild whodunit twist. Who is the killer? Has Danny inherited the bloodlust of Jason Voorhees? Could the real killer be one of the other shifty-eyed characters? Or has Jason himself come back from the dead? Will the "Friday the 13th" series continue until every young actor with a SAG card has been killed of f? I : " L A Classic Recommended Good double feature material Time-killer For masochists only by Rick Broagh VzGirls Just Want To Have Fun In "Girls," Sarah Jessica Parker is the new girl at a Chicago convent school. She likes dancing and gym. And the most important thing in her life is a dance show called "DTV." "Girls" is yet another of those youth pictures that has only a passing pass-ing acquaintance with real teens and their hopes. But the actors are almost charming enough, incredibly, in-credibly, to make you care about the plot. Will the heroine win a contest to become a dancer on DTV? She has a mother (Leigh Taylor-Young) to think each has the hots for the other. Their respective spouses (Fred Ward, Dee Wallace Stone) feel betrayed, then they fall into each others' arms. The story with the four adults ends in a rotten scene where a tense bridge party crumbles into slapstick. But the script is decent. It spends more time working out the comical mathematical permutations permuta-tions of the four couples than having them take off their clothes. And it should also get credit for not treating the grown-ups as an alien race. Their personality quirks are the same as the kids', with some middle-aged spread added. "Secret Admirer" is piffle, but at least it doesn't mistake grossness for humor. |