Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, May 1, 1993 TAG: 9305010137
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: B10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MIKE MAYO
DATELINE: IT CAME FROM THE VIDEO STORE LENGTH: Long
\ "Ted & Venus" is a comedy/drama/romance about a poet who falls in love with a beautiful young community activist at the height of the Watergate business in 1974. It's a fitting story for Bud Cort, best known for "Harold and Maude" and "Brewster McCloud," to choose for his directing debut.
When Ted (Cort) meets Linda (Kim Adams), he thinks she is the vision he once saw or imagined rising from the Venice, Calif., surf. The fact that she already has a live-in beau (Brian Thompson) doesn't dissuade Ted. His best friend Max (James Brolin), a free-spirited artist, advises him to take it easy, but Ted's in love. He'll do anything to win Linda, and that's the point of the film.
When does love become something else? Does infatuation excuse everything? Can expressions of eternal devotion turn to terrorism? Is Ted a fool for love, or has he crossed a line into true madness? Those aren't simple questions, and Cort keeps viewers off-balance, unsure of their reactions. He doesn't end with expected answers, either.
In a day when sexual harassment and laws against stalking are the subjects of heated public debate, the film could hardly be more timely. The script by Cort and Paul Ciotti is based on a newspaper story Ciotti wrote about a real character. In a telephone interview, Cort said that he studied the character firsthand, but he was also trying to work with the themes of the great love stories, "Cyrano de Bergerac" and "Beauty and the Beast."
He succeeded, but the film is at its best in its exploration of believably eccentric characters. Though Cort is a bit too frantic in some scenes, he makes Ted's obsession real and pitiable. The supporting characters are excellent. Newcomer Kim Adams has the right combination of beauty, vulnerability and steel to make Linda a compelling figure. James Brolin, best known for his TV work, turns in a grand performance as the archetypal bohemian who really cares about his friend.
Some well-known folks show up in cameos, too. Look for Woody Harrelson, Andrea Martin, Rhea Perlman, Timothy Leary, Vincent Shiavelli and Gena Rowlands.
All too often, films set in the late '60s and '70s tend to reduce those years to a set of cliches; the silly fashions, the trite aphorisms. Cort has resisted that temptation. The film is true to its time and, as Cort put it, "the craziness of that world."
In that regard, "Ted & Venus" is a lot more rewarding, surprising and enjoyable than most of the predictable formulas that are playing on the big screen these days.
So is "The Gun in Betty Lou's Handbag."
It's a sharp, smart comic mystery about a young woman who confesses to a murder. Why would mild-mannered Betty Lou Perkins (Penelope Ann Miller) do such a thing? After all, she's a happily married librarian in the little town of Tetley, Mo. (actually Oxford, Miss.).
Was she really rubbing out a Mafia stool pigeon at the local No-Tell motel while she was supposed to be leading the 3-year-old story hour? Of course not. But she did find the murder weapon, and when she tried to tell her policeman husband (Eric Thal) about it, he was too busy to listen.
That's the story of Betty Lou's life.
Though she's quick and intelligent, she's just not assertive enough. Nobody pays any attention to her. Once she confesses, though, the spotlight's on her. And, hey, it's not so bad; especially after she picks up some pointers from Reba (Cathy Moriarty), a tough cookie she meets in jail.
William Forsythe is properly menacing as the villain, and Alfre Woodard all but steals the movie in a terrific comic supporting role as Betty Lou's lawyer. But this one belongs to Penelope Ann Miller. She has an unusual chameleon-like quality. In all of her films, from "Awakenings" to "Chaplin" with several more between, she has looked remarkably different, and she does the same thing here. Her transformation from mouse to vamp is dynamite.
She and the rest of the cast had fine material to work with in Grace Cary Bickley's script. The action moves crisply, and the small-town characters have a believability that Hollywood seldom achieves.
Director Alan Moyle contributes the same dark sense of humor that made "Pump Up the Volume" so good. In other hands, this material could easily have been too cute, too feminine in the most limiting sense of the word, but that's never a consideration.
"The Gun in Betty Lou's Handbag" is one of those hard-to-classify little gems that suffered a limited theatrical release. It won't lose anything on the small screen. Both it and "Ted & Venus" are going to be sleeper hits on home video. They're just the sort of movie that the medium was made for.
New releases
The Distinguished Gentleman: ***1/2
Starring Eddie Murphy, Lane Smith. Directed by Jonathan Lynn. Buena Vista. 110 min. Rated R for a little strong language. Eddie Murphy tries to return to the kind of characters he played in "48 HRS." and "Trading Places" in this political comedy. He's a Florida con man who scams his way into the House of Representatives, and tries to milk the lucrative position for all it's worth. Of course, in the end, he has to choose between principles and greed.
by CNB