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Show OToole's sterling performance glows in lusterless 'Creator' fbllioklO byRickBrough VM11.M and Robin Moench (if -v U ' Cm V C Now Showing i At the Holiday Village Cinemas : Beverly Hills Cop VzCocoon Invasion USA ( not yet rated ) Witness fH Creator "Creator" begins as a sitcom, with Peter O'Toole as the only solid virture. As a jaded, elegant eccentric, eccen-tric, he holds the screen. If only we hadn't seen him play this kind of part before with "The Stuntman" and "My Favorite Year" . . . O'Toole plays Dr. Harry Wolper, a Nobel-Prize Nobel-Prize winning, cigar-smoking biologistsurgeon who takes young graduate student Boris (Vincent Spano) under his wing to teach him the Big Picture. It's not clear what the Big Picture is, except that Harry believes God is a sly silent partner in his work ("When Science climbs over the crest of the hill, it will find Religion was waiting on the other side all along," he says). Armed with this faith, he wants to clone his dead wife, whose cells he has been cultivating. He also "borrows" equipment from his university for his private experiments. All this does not endear him to his rival, bullying clod Sid Kuulenbeck (David Ogden Stiers, who plays the part more like Frank Burns than his own "MASH" role, Charles Winchester). Win-chester). The set-up looks like the pilot for a TV series. The movie is further confused with two more plots thrown in. Boris tries to woo a beautiful student (Virginia Madsen) and Harry begins an affair with a , 19-year-old (Mariel Hemingway) Hem-ingway) who is hired to help him "fertilize" his wife. Hemingway brings a lively touch to the picture, though the script requires her to talk like Harry, and she can't handle the lines with OToole's aplomb. (Lord, who can?) And occasionally she gets a clinker of a line, as when she says to Harry, "You goddamn classical musical heartbreaker! " The film is mostly five characters in search of a decent story. And at '- first you think it won't help whenjthe squeal. Axel became respectable--as the most talented but un-disciplines un-disciplines cop on the Detroit police force). Axel traces his friend's trail back to an icy Beverly Hills art collector. But as soon as Foley begins asking the bigwig questions, six guys throw him through a window and he's arrested for disturbing the peace. (He asks the cops, "What'd you arrest me for if I was thrown out of a car - jaywalkin'?" Murphy is up against the crooks, the cops and a script originally set for Sylvester Stallone. But you can't imagine anyone else but him doing this picture. Murphy effortlessly brings off a combination of comedy and limber heroism, and an air of being pleased to hell with himself, which he doesn't overuse. over-use. For this movie, he also gives Foley a goofy laugh (is he competing com-peting with Thomas Hulce's Mozart in the Guffaw Sweepstakes? ) . Foley drives a conspicuously dirty Chevy Nova around Beverly Hills, but can still slip away from the well-tailored cops assigned to tail him. The "banana trick" he uses to incapacitate a car may, God help us, be imitated around the country. Eventually, he convinces the local by-the-book cops to take a few chances - just in time to crack a massive smuggling ring. Even though Murhy carries the picture, it also benefits from a fine supporting cast. The two California cops charmed by Foley are played by John Ashton (as the old veteran) and Judge Reinhold (as the rookie). Lisa Elibacher is a nervy, if not especially helpful, female lead. RB V2 Cocoon At a key moment in "Cocoon," one of the characters reflects "It's been a long time since I took a real risk." Ron Howard's comedy-drama is clearly focused on a group of people who have to decide whether they're ready to stop living and risking. The outer-space story is just a catalyst to help answer the question. Four human-looking aliens from the planet Antarea arrive in St. Petersburg, Florida to retrieve their colleagues, who have been resting as cocoons on the ocean floor since they had to stay behind after an Earth visit 10,000 years ago. Renting a house, the aliens "energize" a pool to use as an incubator. They don't realize that three old men (Don Ameche, Wilford Brimley, Hume Crony n) have been trespassing into the pool for daily dips it's a dose of danger in their lives which are otherwise plagued by failing eyesight and the death rattles of their friends. When they dive into the "energized" pool, it's like finding the Fountain of Youth. Their reactions funny, poignant and tragic form the core of the movie and allow four fine actors to shine. Don Ameche's rejuvenated gay blade is a good follow-up to his "Trading Places" performance; Hume Cronym is fine as the oldster, saved from cancer, who falls back into the bad habits of his youth; and Jack Gilford is heart-wrenching as the rest home resident frightened by the Fountain of Youth. Best of all is Wilford Brimley's down-to-earth hero who discloses his irritation with and fear of mortality to his grandson (Barret Oliver). Regrettably, there is less of interest given to the four women in the story (Gwen Verdon, Jessica Tandy, Herta Ware, Maureen Stapleton), but they have their moments. Burly Brian Dennehy, cast against type as the alien leader, brings off the challenge of making his character warm, unearthly and a tad mischievous. A romance between the girl alien (Tahnee Welch, daughter of Racquel) and the captain of a fishing boat (Steve Guttenberg) is charming, and kept in its proper place as a subplot. And Ron Howard's nimble, empathetic direction doesn't even falter when it handles familiar Spielberg elements (glowing spaceships, the law chasing the aliens.) RB k A Classic I Recommended Good double feature material Time-killer For masochists only Blond-haired Alexander Godunov (right) keeps a sharp eye on Amish widow Kelly McGillis as she serves Philadelphia cop Harrison Ford during a meal at a barn-raising in "Witness." plot takes a "Love Story" turn, with one of the characters felled by illness. ill-ness. But (to take Dr. Johnson's thought wildly out of context), death concentrates the scriptwriter's mind wonderfully. And while the new story is corny, the performances here are more heartfelt than in the rest of the picture (especially from Spano and Madsen). With that final segment of the picture, plus O'Toole's talent, "Creator" gets by. RB V2 Witness "Witness" is an absorbing, off-beat crime drama, although the ingredients barely fall short of coming together in the way they - should. Harrison Ford plays a Philadelphia cop investigating the restroom murder of a policeman that was witnessed by a young Amish boy. When he finds out the guilty parties are members of his own department, Ford has to flee and hide out in an Amish farm with the boy and his mother (Kelly McGillis). Director Peter Weir is one of the best filmmakers when it comes to evoking atmosphere, and he does an excellent job of contrasting the poisonous city scene with the peaceful Amish town. In depicting the latter, most directors would end up with a mellow, vacuous mood. But Weir gives us some unforgettable unforget-table moments the way people seem to appear out of the rolling fields likftpirits of the earth; or thj , communal understated warmth of a barn-raising sequence. When the bad guys show up, you shudder not so much for Ford, but for the community that will be bloodied. Weir is less successfully in the romantic subplot, where a chemistry never develops between the two leads. RB Beverly Hills Cop Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy) is ticked off because his closest friend has been killed by a pair of professional hitmen. (When they wjere delinquent childhood friends, Axel's buddy was the one who was caught by the cops, but didn't |