Boxoffice-June.1991

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THE FIVE HEARTBEATS
Starring Robert Townsend, Michael Wright, Leon, Harry ].
Lennix, Tico Wells, Diahann Carroll, Harold Nicholas, Chuck Patterson,
Hawthorne James and John Canada Terrell
Produced by Loretha C Jones Directed by Robert Townsend.
Written by Robert Townsend and Keenen Ivory Wayans
A Twentieth Century Fox release Drama, rated R Running
time: 122 min Screening date March 21, 1991
In his first film as writer-director, comedian Robert Townsend
parodied the pHght of black actors in Hollywood, painting
out that their main opportunities for employment came in
portraying pimps and drug dealers. With his follow-up, "The
Five Heartbeats," Townsend has tried to right that wrong,
supplying a variety of roles for blacks; unfortunately, his
script (co-written with Keenen Ivory Wayans) is so hackneyed
that few will ever get to see these more positive role models.
"The Five Heartbeats" follows the career of a fictitious
vocal group of that name, from early talent competitions to
superstardom. The Heartbeats line up as follows; Townsend
plays Duck, their resident genius songwriter; Michael Wright
is Eddie, the excessive lead singer; (one-named) Leon is J.T.,
Duck's womanizing brother; Harry J. Lennix is Dresser, who
choreographs their dance-steps; and Tico Wells is Choirboy,
the son of a minister. There's also Chuck Patterson as their
manager Jimmy, Diahann Carroll as his wife; Harold Nicholas
as a dancer who helps them out; John Canada Terrell as
"Flash," the singer who takes over when Eddie goes too far;
and Hawthorne James as Big Red, a greedy record executive.
With all these characters playing substantial roles, there's
little time for individual development, and the film plays like
a greatest hits medley of their lives. There's no depth, and no
real dramatic structure; from scene to scene, it's hard to tell
how much time has passed And the characters, though they
collectively cover a broad spectrum of human behavior, still
come off individually as cliches: Duck is sensitive, Eddie has a
compulsive-addictive personality, and so on; we're presented
with their dominant character trait, and that's it—there's no
development.
Nor is there much of the goofy humor that made "Hollywood
Shuffle" so endearing: the film's only truly hilarious
moments come wtih a running gag involving The Five Horsemen,
an all-white group that rips off the Heartbeats' songs.
The best moments in the film come during the musical numbers,
which actually manage to replicate the vitality of the
Motown songs that inspired the film.
Otherwise, "The Five Heartbeats" plays like a bad TV
movie, or a parody of rocumentaries in which Townsend
inexplicably forgot to include any jokes. He'll do better in the
future if he sticks with the comedic talent that made him
semi-famous in the first place.
Rated R for language. Jeff Schwager
SPARTACUS
Starring Kirk Douglas, Laurence Olivier, Jean Simmons,
Charles Laughton, Peter Ustinov, Tony Curtis and John Gavin
Produced by Kirk Douglas and Edward Lewis Directed by
Stanley Kubrick Written by Dalton Tnimbo Based on the novel
by Howard Fast Reconstructed and Restored by Robert Harris
Reconstruction and Restoration Produced by James C Katz Editorial
Consultant: Robert Lawrence
A Universal release Drama, rated PG-13 Running time 197
min
,
including intermission Screening date: 4/18/91-
Theoretically, the story of "Spartacus" the gladiator who
led a doomed revolt of Roman slaves against the Empire and
was crucified for his trouble, should be one immense downer,
yet this classic sword-and-sandal epic from 1960, written by a
blacklisted screenwriter and based on a novel by a blacklisted
author, manages to be poignant and uplifting without shirking
from its ultimate tragedy.
With a voiceover assuring us that slavery no longer exists
and that Christianity was solely responsible for the demise of
the evil empire that was Rome, our story opens as the slave
Spartacus hamstrings a guard with his bare teeth. It looks like
our hero is going to die of starvation when all of a sudden
Batiatus (Ustinov) drafts Spartacus into gladiatorial school
where he leams to fight, to bathe, and against all odds, to
love.
The snails and oysters replete, this restored spectacle
proved that they don't make them like they used to.
Kubrick's epic saw a regal opening boxofSce of $23,041
at four big-city theatres.
The object of Spartacus' affections is the slave Varinia
(Simmons). Yet when the Roman general Crassus (Olivier)
and his entourage come to the gladiatorial school for a private
match, Crassus becomes obsessed with Varinia even as Spartacus
fights for his life in the arena below. Cras,sus purchases
Varinia, and when Spartacus leams that he'll never see her
again, he immediately becomes so incensed that he slays his
overseers and proceeds to lead thousands of ex-slaves against
the might of the Roman legions.
This film, with its much-vaunted spectacle — portrayed by a
cast of over ten thousand—manages to be as much a character
study as an epic, as much an allegory as a history lesson.
Director Kubrick trains the camera tightly on his actors and
for the most part delegates the spectacle of the tale to the
background. Even during the scenes of mass exodus, Kubrick
picks out several characters and follows them, personalizing
both their joys and trials. The overall effect is
not unlike that
of the films of Sergei Eisenstein, a mini-movie, as it were,
within a movie.
The acting here is perhaps the best the cinema of the period
had to offer. In marked contrast to the cool portrayals of
today's action epics, Douglas plays Spartacus broadly, as a
simple, eloquent man equally as capable of tenderness as he is
of savagery. Ustinov's oily, opportunistic Batiatus provides the
film with black humor, while Laughton's pragmatic, cynical
senator Gracchus becomes the doomed hero of the political
intrigue inherent in the tale.
Profiting most from the restored footage is Olivier's performance.
Although he claimed to be just a technician, Olivier
brings great depth and passion — phis a few instances of unexpected
humor— to his portrait of the consummate Roman soldier:
an especially difficult feat when you consider that during
the course of the story his character not only tries to seduce
the poet-slave Antoninus (Curtis, in one of the scenes initially
cut and now restored), but also, toward the end, Varinia herself
In another restored scene, Olivier presents the defeated
Laughton with a list of those who had been disloyal to the
Roman Empire during the crisis of the slave revolt. Olivier's
Crassus is the personification of men— democratic men—who
would give up their freedom for the illusion of security and
order, and as such it's his character, as much as that of Douglas'
Spartacus, that personifies the political allegory that permeates
this film.
Douglas, in his producer's hat, couldn't have been unaware
of the script's references to the McCarthyism of the fifties,
and surely that must have been part of his motivation when he
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