Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 10, 1993 TAG: 9304100226
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: B7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CHRIS GLADDEN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
`PROPOSAL' IS AN EXERCISE IN SILLINESS
The ghosts of John Beresford Tipton and Jay Gatsby are reincarnated in the elegantly attired Robert Redford in "Indecent Proposal."In "The Millionaire," Tipton gave people a million bucks and then watched what happened to their lives.
This is the 1990s, however, and nothing's free anymore.
Redford, with the Gatsby white suits and slouch, plays billionaire John Gage, who offers a million bucks to Dave and Diana Murphy. Only there's a condition: Diana has to spend the night with him.
Director Adrian Lyne brings his trademark sleek visual style to this lugubrious exercise in silliness. But for all of its attempts to manipulate audience emotions, the movie is hollow and unmoving. A heavy hand in the script and the direction is much to blame.
Woody Harrelson and Demi Moore play Dave and Diana, a husband and wife who've loved each other since their teen years. He's an architect, and she's a real estate agent. They're building a dream house that's supposedly going to launch his career, when what should jump out at them like an ornery pit bull but the Recession.
Not to worry, though. Dave is a brilliant kind of guy, and he has a fool-proof idea. Where do you go when you're in desperate need of money? Why, to Vegas where they give it away with uncommon generosity.
The Murphys borrow $5,000 and turn it into $25,000 their first day in town. Dave is so bright that he figures that it will take exactly two hours to win the rest of the $50,000 they need the following day. But that doesn't happen.
Broke and depressed, Dave and Diana are wined and dined by Gage, who has been regarding Diana with the kind of attention hawks reserve for rabbits. Then he springs the proposal.
If the movie sounds similar in plot to "Honeymoon in Vegas," it is. But it's wildly different in tone. Lyne brings some of the steaminess of the even sillier "9 1/2 Weeks" to the beginning of this movie, and then he eschews cheap thrills for an overwrought love story that's supposed to ennoble all of its principles.
Some of the dialogue is as banal as "Love means never having to say you're sorry," but it's not as memorable. And some of the rest is bound to enrage some women viewers. Women are continually referred to as objects to be owned or bartered. Not once does Diana muster up enough gumption to set the possessive Dave and the free-spending Gage straight.
\ Indecent Proposal: *1/2 A Paramount release at Salem Valley 8 (389-0444) and Tanglewood Mall Cinema (989-6165). Rated R for language and sexual content; 130 minutes.