Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 15, 1994 TAG: 9404150063
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOHN HORN ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES LENGTH: Long
John Goodman IS Fred Flintstone. Bingo. ``The Flintstones.''
Eddie Murphy plays that detective again. No sweat. ``Beverly Hills Cop III.''
Mel Gibson remakes the James Garner TV Western. Easy. ``Maverick.''
The summer film season is packed with an assortment of no-brainers, easy-to-sell sequels and lowbrow star vehicles.
Billy Crystal returns in ``City Slickers'' and there's yet another ``Karate Kid'' update (without the Karate Kid himself, since he's now in his 30s). Watch for a movie version of ``Lassie'' and be warned now: Keanu Reeves has the title role in ``Little Buddha.''
Nearly 60 movies will be released nationally between Memorial Day and Labor Day. The most notable summer titles include Disney's animated ``The Lion King,'' Arnold Schwarzenegger's $100 million gamble ``True Lies'' and the late comedian John Candy's last movie, ``Wagons East.''
It's the year's most profitable season, and the studios aren't about to gamble.
Except a little.
In the year's most surprising casting decisions, a couple of Hollywood's most respected performers - Jeff Bridges and Meryl Streep - are setting aside their typically somber and often obscure screen images to anchor two of the season's highest-profile movie thrillers.
Following last year's little-seen ``Fearless'' and the small independent film ``American Heart,'' Bridges will star in July 1's ``Blown Away'' as the leader of the Boston Bomb Squad.
Streep, whose credits include the Australian story ``A Cry in the Dark'' and the epic ``Out of Africa,'' chucks her various accents to play an American whitewater guide in the action film ``The River Wild,'' due in August. Ever the method actress, Streep even did her own stunt work.
Audiences will have the last word on whether the casting against type works. The movies' directors are confident it does.
``I just thought it would be a lot of fun to see her doing something so different from the perceived persona that she has,'' says Curtis Hanson, who directed Streep in ``The River Wild.''
``I'm a big fan of Meryl, and I don't mean this to be pejorative, but I felt that many times people have admired her acting and the characters she has played without identifying so much with those characters. And I thought if we could put her in a movie where the audience really gets sucked in to identify with her ... that we would have something that would really be special.''
Streep plays Gail Hartman, whose failing marriage to David Strathairn is as turbulent as the rapids where the family vacations. The whitewater expedition turns calamitous when the Hartmans meet up with bad guy Kevin Bacon.
Filmed on Oregon's Rogue and Montana's Kootenai and Flathead rivers, ``The River Wild'' aims to turn the usual male action story upside-down.
``First of all, [Streep's] character is a wife and mother, which are trappings the typical male action hero does not bring along,'' Hanson says.
``What motivates Meryl's character in this whole story is taking a trip to bring her family closer together. ... It ends up being about that - but in a very different way than was anticipated.''
Bridges played opposite Clint Eastwood in 1974's ``Thunderbolt and Lightfoot'' and Glenn Close in 1985's ``Jagged Edge.'' For the most part, however, the actor has shunned such mainstream roles in favor of modest stories driven by interesting characters and thoughtful screenplays - in other words, nobody sees his movies.
That may change this summer.
In ``Blown Away,'' a big-budget story from recently moribund MGM, Bridges' bomb-squad expert must outwit and survive a fiendish bomber, played by Tommy Lee Jones.
``I expressed an interest in Jeff and Tommy to play the roles and I thought they both would say no because at that time neither was known as an action star,'' says ``Blown Away'' director Stephen Hopkins. Jones had not yet appeared in ``The Fugitive'' when ``Blown Away'' was cast.
Hopkins, whose credits include ``Predator 2'' and ``Judgment Night,'' says ``Blown Away'' hopes to distinguish itself from other action films by focusing as much on story as on pyrotechnics.
``A lot of the people in the film are much more real than we are used to,'' Hopkins says. ``In my other films, it's usually `Blow up large areas of real estate and kill as many people as possible.' ''
``Blown Away,'' he says, ``looks different. It doesn't look like it's going to be a big slugfest. In some ways, it's funnier. A lot of the fun stuff in the film is suspense - and the suspense won't work if the characters are not conceived well.''
Actors such as Bridges and Streep aren't the only ones charting new courses this summer. Director Robert Zemeckis, familiar for the ``Back to the Future'' movies, is directing what appears to be one of the summer's more original and heartfelt stories.
``Forrest Gump,'' opening July 15, stars ``Philadelphia'' Oscar winner Tom Hanks as a simple-minded hero of war and business not cut from the usual matinee idol pattern.
Co-starring Robin Wright, ``Forrest Gump'' cannot be easily described: It tries to mine a new storytelling vein. Facing such simply sold concept movies as ``City Slickers 2'' and ``The Flintstones,'' ``Forrest Gump'' ends up looking unusual - and tricky to promote.
``I think people ultimately want to see things that are different. That's my feeling about it,'' Zemeckis says.
Many summer movies, Zemeckis concedes, ``already have pre-sell. They're already in the public consciousness. So when you have a movie like `Forrest Gump,' yep, it's a real tough one. But then I think it's very rewarding: It becomes a two-phased, very hard thing to do.
``First, you have to make a movie that people really enjoy. Then you have to get the word out to them,'' he says. ``You can't just do one without the other.''
Trailers: Al Pacino, Oscar winner for ``Scent of a Woman,'' has been cast to play the title role in director Oliver Stone's ``Noriega.'' Filming is scheduled to begin in Florida and Panama this fall.
by CNB