Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 12, 1994 TAG: 9403120114
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: B-12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KATHERINE REED
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The other game is simpler and won't require the use of all your fingers and toes: It's called simply "Count The Funny Jokes." But there aren't enough of them to keep you busy for the movie's 97 tiresome minutes.
I'm just guessing here, but apparently some people find Hogan's Australian accent so charming that they'd be content to watch him read the telephone book. After all, "Crocodile Dundee" was such a success, it entered sequeldom.
The real mystery is what Cuba Gooding Jr., who made his mark in the powerful "Boyz 'N the Hood," is doing in this movie.
"Lightning Jack" is the story of a gunslinger who is left without a gang when his fellow outlaws are wiped out after a bank robbery. Desperate to prove the newspapers wrong by making it on his own, he tries to hold up a bank by himself. He blows it and must take a hostage - a mute grocery boy named Ben Doyle (Gooding), who is so fed up with being treated like an imbecile he begs to be taken on by Jack as an outlaw-in-training.
It's a clear case of "from the frying pan into the fire."
If it isn't offensive enough to watch Gooding mug his way through every scene in the movie - apparently that's how director Simon Wincer ("Free Willy") imagines mutes communicate - Ben is the butt of nearly every weak joke.
When Jack thinks he's been bitten by a rattlesnake, the wound is in his rear end, of course. And guess who is asked to suck the venom out?
That's followed up quickly with a scene that has Ben crouching in the woods for a call of nature. But up comes a big, bad, grizzly bear and Ben, pop-eyed and pants around his ankles, takes off running as fast as he can, with a little help from speeded-up film.
"Musta' been a stinker," Hogan muses.
When Ben and Jack share a light, tender moment talking about their disabilities - Jack's big secret is that he requires reading glasses - Jack tickles himself plumb to death telling Ben "not to tell anyone" about Jack's spectacles.
"I'll probably make up a lot more funny jokes about you," he promises, blue eyes crinkling.
Or not.
Hogan, who wrote the movie, apparently never met a cliche he didn't like. He saw in the western the potential for a pretty good send-up; it worked marvelously well in Mel Brooks' "Blazing Saddles." There's one little thing missing: the humor. Without it, "Lightning Jack" is as slow as, um, molasses.
Lightning Jack 1/2.
A Savoy release playing at the Salem Valley 8. 97 min. Rated PG-13 for violence, adult themes.
by CNB