Boxoffice-October.1993

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up with mostly contemporary material in an effort to chase the bigbucks of a younger generation of moviegoers. There's something a bit" misguided and frenetic about "Men in Tights," as though Brooks were trying to tap into a recent commercialism, thereby shooting with the capricious accuracy of a child's squirt gun. As the central characters Robin Hood and Maid Marian, Gary Elwes and Amy Yasbeck are a physically appealing but otherwise ordinary duo. As often occurs in Brooks' films, the marginal characters are the most compelling, particularly Richard Lewis as Prince John. Bring his trademark neuroses to this context seems almost funnier than anything he's done. Tracey Ullman plays the witch. Latrine, with her customars' wit and enough prosthetics to re-fit The Bionic Woman. Almost unmendonable is Dom DeLuise, whose brand of humor-as he does a takeoff on Brando's Don Corleone-escapes this writer. It is Brooks himself the audience is waiting for. The quintessential performer, he turns up in a too-short segment as a rabbi who performs discount circumcisions, and he easily delivers. He's so funny in this bit that the film could easily have been built around him; when Brooks is on the entire story comes together— all the missteps, all the plot holes are erased. With all its flaws— many of the jokes obtusely spelled out and the laughs intermittent— Brooks' brand of hilarity is rare and true. "Men in Tights," however imperfect, delivers a haphazard type of mirth that is certainly worthwhile. Rated PG-13 for adult humor. -Man Florence WILDER NAPALM Stalling Debra Winger, Dennis Quaid and ArUss Howard. Directed by Glenn Gordon Caron Screenplay by Vince Gilligan. Produced by Mark Johnson and Stuart Cornfield. A Tri Star Pictures release. Drama, ratedPG-13. Runningtime: 110 min. Sound: Dolby A. Projection: Flat. Screening date: 8/1 7/93. If major studios are hesitant to release quirky, eccentric little films, "Wilder Napalm" should cast that hesitancy in stone. Although touched here and there by moments of inspiration, this misfit of a story is plagued "by episodes of incoherence that render it more meaningless than it ought to be. Inspiration hits when the script ventures into blissful moments of Bunuelian surrealism; yet the motivation ofboth character and story is so wobbly that those moments seem little other than freak accidents. Wilder (Arliss Howard) and Wallace (Dennis Quaid) are the brothers Napalm, blessed or— depending on how you look at it— cursed by their mental ability to set fires with the mere flick of their minds. One brother, Wilder, has devoted his life to repressing this mental aberrance of his (we are told, in flashback, that long ago it caused the death of a neighbor when Wilder and his sibling were still children). The other brother, Wallace, after working as a freak in a circus, has decided it's time to cash in on his incendiary talents and to go public on "The David Letterman Show" so as to demonstrate his penchant for fireworks. This decision causes a great rift between the two, but not nearly as explosive a division as does their Cain and Abel predicament— they are both in love with the same woman, Vida (Debra Winger), who happens to be married to Wilder but is happy to oblige Wallace when he comes calling. A tale of telekinetics on one hand, a simple love story on the other, "Wilder Napalm," manages only to ignite itself into oblivion. With so many cross-currents of intention, none of them truly gets lit. There are times when we suspect that all the to-do about fire-mongering (and, in turn, its repression) is some kind of metaphor for the sexuality that lurks in the characters' lives. But this kind of thought can only be shortlived. To hold intact such an idea seems too much a burden for the film. If there were, in fact, some large metaphor, some overriding sense of purpose to the story, it might have taken off Unfortunately, "Wilder Napalm" is too much an earthly creature to rest comfortably with the elements of quirkiness that now and again pop through the surface. What results is a puzzle whose pieces look to be supremely uncomfortable with one another. Rated PG-13 for suggested sexuality.—Man^i/n Moss R-73 BOXOKKICE
_ 5 5 €NT€RTniNM€NT DRTn, INC.'S COnST TO COnST BOXOFFICC SUMA/inRV The Fugitive $22,438,277 $9,492 $60,056,238 _ Jason Goes to Hell-Final Chap. $7.352.190 $5.574 $7,552,190 New Line ^Rising Sun $41,007,105 Fox C .The Secret Garden $4.625.583 $3,507 "^O Qn the Line of Fire ^) C Heart and Souls $4,322,250 ^) C Jurassic Park $4,300.805 $299,567,960 C Free Willy $4,008,006 _9_^ C The Firm $2.146 C Robin Hood: Men in Tights $2,352 $24,343,798 OP 1 LIMIT€D R€L€nScS (UJiclest pomt of releose opproximotely 400 simultoneous runs or less) UJeekend % Ciig. Total UUknd. Screen % Chg. Totol <strong>Boxoffice</strong> 8/3 •8/1 Totol Rveroge Rveroge Through •8/1 CSearching for Bobby Fischer IS/^
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Boxoffice-October.1993

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