Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, May 27, 1995 TAG: 9505300054
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: B-10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KATHERINE REED STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
It is her finest scene in the film.
She is a beautiful woman. She is not, unfortunately, a very good actress, and that is the No. 1 problem with this movie.
It focuses, in the myopic way of most teen-age love stories, on Matt (Chris O'Donnell, Pacino's companion in "Scent of a Woman") and Casey (Barrymore), a somewhat disturbed girl who is new to Seattle, where the movie begins.
Matt, whose mom left him when he was 10, is entranced by the "spontaneous" and "irrepressible" Casey when he spies her kicking - then fixing - her yellow Volkswagen beetle.
Uh, okay.
They go hear a band, Casey acts mysterious, then decides she's interested in Matt after all. She desmonstrates this a few days later by pulling the fire alarm to get him out of class, where he just happens to be taking the SAT.
"You are not the center of the universe, Casey," he shouts at her.
"Well, sometimes I am," she replies.
It is a rare moment of honesty in this movie, which piles on cues without ever delivering anything of real emotional impact. Here's a scene where Casey weaves crazily in and out of traffic, smiling at Matt as if to say (sigh), "Aren't I crazy?" Cue: Feel that they are falling in love.
Here's a scene where Casey gets into a fight with her suffocating father and ineffectual mother, throws some stuff around her room, climbs over her bedroom balcony and swims across the lake to Matt, who has watched the whole thing through his telescope and has already swum out to meet her. Cue: Feel her anguish. Feel how much he needs her.
A lot of this is not the fault of director Antonio Bird or the screenwriter, Paula Milne. But it was a mistake to cast an actress as weak as Barrymore in a role that requires convincing displays of out-of-control behavior. Barrymore is a totally self-conscious actress; her voice is affected, her every gesture obviously calculated. Her displays of anger look more like temper tantrums than the real thing.
That makes Casey a not especially sympathetic character and "Mad Love" a not very interesting movie at all.
Mad Love
* 1/2
A Touchstone Pictures release, showing at the Grandin Theatre and Salem Valley 8. 99 minutes. Rated PG-13 for some adult situations and profanity.
by CNB