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

DATE: SATURDAY, October 9, 1993                   TAG: 9310120029
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: B7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MIKE MAYO CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SKIP THIS ONE, FOLKS - 'MR. JONES' IS A TURKEY

In "Mr. Jones" Richard Gere unleashes the full force of his emotional acting skills. It's not a pretty sight.

No piece of scenery is safe from this one-man dramatic onslaught as Gere sets out to dazzle moviegoers with his charm. The fact that he's playing a character who's unstable and thoroughly unsympathetic doesn't matter. Or perhaps the filmmakers thought audiences wouldn't notice that the hero is an overbearing jerk.

In either case, the result is the same: a film that's painful to watch.

The title character (Gere, who's also one of the film's producers) is a suicidal manic depressive who can, for brief periods, appear to be rational. Most of the time, though, he's a giddy out-of-control manipulator who tries to drag others into his fantasy world. One of those is Dr. Bowen (Lena Olin), a psychiatrist. After a couple of psychotic episodes, Mr. Jones becomes her patient.

Since everyone knows what happens between attractive doctors and patients in movies, the outcome of their relationship is never in doubt. At the same time, the relationship is virtually impossible to believe. No mature professional woman would stay with this guy one second more than she absolutely had to. But this is a Hollywood movie, so you don't question that part of it.

The real point to the script by Eric Roth and Michael Cristoffer is Mr. Jones' history and inner self. Why is he such a hyperactive lout? What caused him to become so insufferable? The film flirts with several answers but never really resolves anything. The doctors and other patients involved engage in long spurts of psychobabble while Jones claims that he simply is what he is and tosses his lithium in the trash.

Director Mike Figgis ("Stormy Monday," "Internal Affairs") does his best to make Jones attractive, but it's a lost cause from the beginning. Then later in the film, when all of the pieces should be coming together, a huge hole opens up in the plot. The big, noisy, emotional conclusion doesn't make any more sense than the rest of the film.

"Mr. Jones" is a waste of time and effort for all concerned.

Mr. Jones: X (BOMB)

A TriStar release playing at the Salem Valley 8. 114 min. Rated R for strong language, some sexual content.

by CNB