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BEAVIS AND BUTT-HEAD DO AMERICA

Someone stole the TV! The cartoon boys go out to hunt for it, or a reasonable replacement.

Though similar to the plot of Pee Wee's Big Adventure, Mike Judge (the creator of this popular animated duo and their big screen incarnation) might have been better off sticking with the boys' quest for a new tube. Unfortunately, instead they get involved with the same old lame sort of plot involving a secret weapon, G-men, etc. that less creative minds so often fall back on for comedy/adventure material.

Here's the basics of the story: Beavis has a MacGuffin in his pants. Everybody wants it. He and Butt-Head travel across the country engaging in simple wordplay and the cheapest of thrills, while arms dealers and government agents (led by Robert Stack) try to track them down. They sometimes get help from an old woman (Cloris Leachman). They often bedevil their vacationing neighbor Anderson. Beavis' alter-ego the Great Cornholio makes a couple of appearances. And the boys get together with their old pal Bill Clinton.

Though sometimes very funny, the average Beavis and Butt-Head TV episode has a more interesting storyline, and this lack of focus thins the humor over the course of the picture. A disappointment, it ends up with more misses than hits on the laugh-o-meter.

DAYLIGHT

This movie spends its first fifteen minutes introducing the usual cross section of characters who'll soon find themselves at the heart of a catastrophe. Interesting folks, but I found myself distracted by the oddly ominous music playing over each scene. I almost laughed at the nervous and somber tones accompanying a dog on his way to the vet. Is everyone doomed?

Director Rob Cohen (Dragonheart) tries his hand at a disaster flick, one which star Sylvester Stallone intends as a transitory film between his action hero image and meatier dramatic roles (personally, I think he ought to work more behind the camera, where he's earned the most acclaim). The result is a strange hybrid of action film (man vs. man) and disaster film (man vs. environment), in which Stallone plays a beefy emergency rescue expert who finds his way into the Holland Tunnel after it's sealed off by an explosion in an effort to lead the trapped survivors to safety. Not unlike their troubled group of characters trying desperately to escape from the wreckage, both star and director seem to be reaching for something better, but their vehicle is mired in far too many cliches from both genres to achieve more than medium success. There's a touch of heart, plenty of claustrophobic terror, and awesome f/x (especially during the initial explosion sequence) on display in this film, but it's not enough to really stand out in this year of movie spectacles. ½

EVERYONE SAYS I LOVE YOU

Woody Allen has settled into a confortable groove the past few years, producing a series of pleasant and funny situation comedies, each with a distinctive gimic to set it apart. For his latest picture, the gimic is that it's a musical comedy in which none of the leads is known for their singing.

It's the story of an extended family of upper class New Yorkers and their various romantic adventures, nothing more. As in life, there really is no beginning or end, just a string of connected events. The star singers range from good (Goldie Hawn, as Alan Alda's wife and Woody's ex), to miserable (Julia Roberts, who may not be able to sing, but she's never looked better). Wisely, Allen was not so presumptuous as to think he could produce a string of catchy new hit songs, and instead selected some sure-fire standards. And yes, this is yet another of Allen's love letters to New York City and underage girls.

This might not sound too promising, but somehow Allen makes it all work. This is one of his most joyfull films, perfectly capturing the spirit of the great musicals, but filtered through his own wry wit. Anxieties that dogged him in the past are here treated as mere hobbies he trots out for his own amusement. Death itself won't get him down - here, a funeral becomes a conga line of mourners and ghosts. This is a film that's drenched in charm, from the beautifully shot views of New York (as well as Venice and Paris) to Woody's wonderful Christmas Eve song-and-dance with Hawn. So what if the story has no overall structure, you'll be laughing hard enough you won't notice until it's over.

MARVIN'S ROOM

A first class tearjerker, with a couple of first class lead performances. This one mines the familiar Chick Movie territory of horrible disease and family bonding.

Diane Keaton is struggling to care for her bedridden father (Hume Cronyn, who mumbles and moans as well as anyone could in this role) and ailing aunt. When she is diagnosed positive for leukemia, she sends for her estranged sister Meryl Streep and her two sons, hoping to find a bone marrow donor. Streep has her own problems - she has to get son Leonardo DiCaprio out of the mental hospital (he burned down the house) to make the trip. She finds herself drawn back to the fate she tried to escape 20 years before, that of taking the role of caregiver to an ailing loved one.

While the squabbling of this dysfunctional assemblage, both humorous and dramatic, are entertaining, I found the film's message to be disturbing. We're supposed to take for granted that Streep's dream of becoming a successful cosmetologist is petty and selfish, while the life of the saintly Keaton, feeding applesauce to the infantile Cronyn while he soils his sheets, is endlessly rewarding to the spirit. Yes, it's better to give than to receive - but that doesn't mean that trying to achieve your own place in the world, rather than the place thrust upon you, is necessarily evil.

MY FELLOW AMERICANS

Two guys on the run from government agents, crisscrossing the country, pause every few minutes to make a penis joke. No, it's not Beavis and Butt-Head this time, but Jack Lemmon and James Garner as a pair of bickering grumpy old ex-Presidents, mixed up in a scandal in present Commander-In-Chief Dan Akroyd's administration. While B & B strive only to be crude in their quest for laughs, Garner & Lemmon are much worse: they strive to be cute. It's difficult to decide which comedy team is more distasteful.

Akroyd gets to do little more than put in the same eyebrow wiggling routine he's handed us in most of his other roles. At least Lauren Bacall, as Lemmon's wife, gets in a few tart lines. I can't say that this movie doesn't score any laughs, but for the most part it has to coast on the charm of its two co-stars. I love both of them, but they deserve a better story to support these characters.

This marks the fifteenth new movie I've seen in the past year in which renegade government agents are the bad guys, easily equaling the quotient of menace provided by more traditional criminals of various types (for the record, ETs were the heavies five times, and vampires only twice). However, though U.S. Presidents have appeared about a dozen times, they are almost always portrayed at least sympathetically, if not as outright heroes. There's a message in there somewhere.

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