
                         THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
                 Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, June 18, 1994                    TAG: 9406170084 
SECTION: DAILY BREAK                     PAGE: E3    EDITION: FINAL  
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER 
DATELINE: 940618                                 LENGTH: Medium

DON'T BOTHER TO WRESTLE WITH ``EARNEST HEMINGWAY''

{LEAD} ``WRESTLING Ernest Hemingway'' has nothing to do with Ernest Hemingway although it does, persistently and aggressively, set out to suggest that the bell is going to toll for all of us sooner or later.

It concerns two lonely and quite disparate elderly retirees in a Florida town. They become pals in spite of their differences. Overwrought and quite hammy performances by Richard Harris and Robert Duvall make it more a show of excesses than it should have been. Director Randa Haines seems to think she can push the emotional buttons at any time - and get away with it. We see through her manipulations more often than we should.

{REST} In effect, this is ``Grumpy Old Men'' without the laughs.

Harris, who is the greater offender of over-acting, plays a salty Irish ex-seafarer who has seen it all and is eager to tell about it. He claims to have womanized more women than would seem possible. He also claims to have once, in his youth, wrestled Hemingway.

Robert Duvall plays the quiet and gentlemanly ex-barber who has spent most of his live observing, and serving. He knows little of women, but he has a crush on the pretty waitress at the local lunch counter (played with pleasing vibrance by Sandra Bullock). Duvall is saddled here, though, by a Cuban accent - as if he felt the accent were more important than the characterization.

The inimitable Piper Laurie adds yet-another gem to her list. She plays a coquettish, flirty senior citizen who knows how to keep a man interested, and waiting.

Shirley MacLaine adds gutsy feist, and little more, to her small role as Harris' landlady - a woman who appears tough but is really lonely and vulnerable.

The film has a joyful scene when Duvall learns the daring and joy of skinny-dipping. There is a poignant scene when the two look on, from a distance, at the fireworks of life. There is, of course, the highly predictable finale. Haines needs to learn how to restrain her actors.

The trouble with ``Wrestling With Ernest Hemingway'' is that just about every turn of the plot is highly predictable.

by CNB