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

DATE: SATURDAY, May 15, 1993                   TAG: 9305150224
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: B6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: JACK MATHEWS NEWSDAY
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

AUDIENCE WINDS UP GETTING LOST IN `YONKERS'

In the press notes for the movie adaptation of Neil Simon's Pulitzer Prize-winning play "Lost in Yonkers," Simon is quoted as saying, "Comedy based on comedic situations has no weight to it. . . . You can laugh at it, but you forget it the minute you're out of the theater."

I did not see "Lost in Yonkers" on stage, so I'll have to take the word of Simon and the Pulitzer committee that its heft weighed on audiences long after it ended. However, with the exception of the reprised Tony performances of Mercedes Ruehl and Irene Worth, the filmed version, directed by Martha Coolidge from Simon's script, doesn't linger much beyond the allotted minute.

More than most of his previous films, "Lost in Yonkers" gives us plenty to think about while we're watching. Its central story, about the child-woman Bella (Ruehl) and her ungainly attempts to liberate herself from the emotional cruelty of her mother (Worth), is almost painfully compelling.

Where the movie goes wrong is in Simon's uncertain narrative structure. Everyone in the story is figuratively lost in Yonkers, but it is the learning-disabled Bella, a woman of 36 with the emotional development of an adolescent, whose rescue interests us most. Yet, Simon tells the story from the clumsily alternating points of view of Bella and (for way too long) her 15-year-old nephew Jay (Brad Stoll).

The story takes place almost entirely in and around the two-story home and candy store of Grandma Kurnitz (Worth) in Yonkers, where, in 1942, Bella's widowed brother Eddie (Jack Laufer) deposits his sons Jay and Arty (Mike Damus) while he scoots South for a few months to earn some money.

For the likable kids, it is like being dropped off at a summer camp in purgatory. Grandma Kurnitz is the witch in "Hansel and Gretel," minus the warmth.

"Lost in Yonkers" sets us up for that story, Jay and Arty's sweet-and-sour summer working in and living above Grandma's candy shop. The other family members - Bella, her brother Louie (Richard Dreyfuss), a small-time hustler on the lam with some mob money, and speech-impaired sister Gert (Susan Merson) - seem subordinate to the relationship between the boys and their grandmother.

Coolidge ("Rambling Rose") underscores that expectation by treating the grandmother as a classic movie monster, using foreboding music and the thud of her cane against the hardwood to let us know she's coming.

But when the film finally settles on Bella and holds its focus on her determination to bring love into her life, "Lost in Yonkers" gets its bearings. Bella is a wonderfully written character, an innocent living a hell of her mother's making, and her struggle to understand it, and break free of it, is the only story Simon needed to tell here.

It is Bella's relationship with a slow-witted, deeply withdrawn movie usher (David Strathairn), and her hopes for a real romance, that lead Bella to finally confront her mother. The force of that scene - the anguished plea of Bella contrasted with the stubborn coldness of her mother - will stay with us for a long time, if little else does.

\ Lost in Yonkers: A Columbia Pictures release showing at the Salem Valley (389-0444) and Tanglewood Mall (989-6165) theaters. Rated PG.

by CNB