YOUR MOST EXCELLENT HOSTS NEVER SHOULD HAVE LEFT THE BASEMENT

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, February 15, 1992                   TAG: 9202150271
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: E-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: CHRIS GLADDEN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
YOUR MOST EXCELLENT HOSTS NEVER SHOULD HAVE LEFT THE BASEMENT
Mike Myers and Dana Carvey, the "Saturday Night Live" skitsters, can't quite carry a full-length feature in "Wayne's World."
But that's more the fault of a plot that kind of runs out of steam than the comic talents of Myers and Carvey. As the two head bangers who seem to be stuck in a perpetual adolescence despite the fact that they're threatening to show wrinkles, they're pretty funny.
Wayne (Myers) and Garth (Carvey) are two zonked Aurora, Ill., guys who put on their own public-access TV show live from the basement of Wayne's parents' home. Their world consists of music - mainly '70s metal, girls and partying.
An unscrupulous producer, played by Rob Lowe, sees the chance to use the show to his own advantages. He talks a video game manufacturer into advertising on "Wayne's World" and then sets out to control the show.
Myers has a lot of comic screen presence as the almost relentlessly cheerful Wayne. The character is apparently shallow but is given to bursts of unexpected intelligence. Wayne is apparently an idiot savant of some sort. Garth is a nerd living in Wayne's shadow but he, too, has unsuspected dimensions.
"Wayne's World" is at its funniest when it focuses on, well, Wayne's world: his head-banger buddies, the babes he pursues, the donut shop he frequents, the rock club where he hangs out.
When the broader story takes hold - Wayne and Garth against the villainous producer who is out to steal Wayne's show and his girl - the movie is not nearly so funny. It resorts to the type of plot that stretches back to the rock musicals of the '50s.
Director Penelope Spheeris made the metal documentary "The Decline of Western Civilization" and its sequel, and she knows her way around heavy metal anthropology.
`Wayne's World': **1/2 A Paramount picture at Salem Valley 8 (389-0444) and Valley View Mall 6 (362-8219). Rated PG-13 for language and mild sexual content. 110 minutes.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB