THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, February 8, 1996 TAG: 9602080025
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E5 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Movie Review
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, MOVIE CRITIC
LENGTH: Medium: 90 lines
CONTRARY TO what you might expect, ``White Squall'' was not filmed on location in Hampton Roads during the past week. Rather, it provides stops at Grenada and other sun-drenched Caribbean ports - an effective visual antidote to the ice around us if you could manage to slide to the theaters.
The title storm is a knockout of moviemaking, complete with waves and wind that churn the screen into a holocaust of seafaring adventure. Unfortunately, the storm comes 90 minutes into the film. Before that, we're stuck in calm waters with very little other than hot air to fill our sails.
The setting is aboard the Albatross, a kind of sea-going prep school, in which teen boys are taught the sturdiness of sailing in addition to their academic classes. Based on a true story, all the elements of high movie adventure are here. You'd expect the storm to be the center of the movie but you'd also expect it to come earlier in the film - perhaps with a dramatic after-effect trial about whether the skipper was negligent or not.
Instead, you get ``Dead Poets Society'' in a coming-of-age list of cliches that makes it resemble no more than any of the many other ``Dead Poets'' imitators.
Jeff Bridges, looking more stiff and stuffy than his father ever did in ``Sea Hunt,'' is the captain who barks orders as if he were in training to become Captain Bligh. Bridges spurts lines like ``Don't test me'' and endless cliches about how the only way to become a man is, apparently, to learn to climb the mast.
Tough love, though, is the name of the game and, in the end, the boys rally to give him a big thank-you hug after a Coast Guard trial in Florida that is treated as anti-climax rather than the drama it might have been.
In between, there is the rich boy who hates his domineering father, the shy boy who can't climb the mast, the bully, the troublemaker. For the feminine fans (presumably the younger sisters of those who made ``Dead Poets Society'' a hit) the lads frequently strip their T shirts and traipse about in skivvies.
Although set in the autumn of 1960, the young actors are given little knowledge or mood of the era. The period is suggested only by a JFK speech on the TV and a blip that is supposed to be Alan Shepherd's space flight. Seemingly, the outside world is another place.
The lads all look the same: Hollywood lean. Each is ready and anxious to become the next Tom Cruise. Although it's difficult to tell them apart, Scott Wolf of TV's ``Party of Five'' series is likable as the narrator and Balthazar Getty (a descendant of J. Paul Getty) gives, perhaps, the best performance.
The skipper's wife is Jane Goodall (who was Mrs. Schindler in ``Schindler's List''). She is stuck mainly with smiling pleasantly. There is some hint that this is an unconventional couple but not enough screen time to develop any real relationship.
There are several chances for drama, both of which are dismissed in passing rather than developed into anything suggesting tension. A Cuban ship detains the sailing vessel - but just long enough for Captain Bridges to talk tough yet again. In the movie's most wrenching, and dramatically undeveloped, scene, a dolphin is fatally speared by a stressed-out crewmember.
That leaves the storm itself. Ridley Scott (director of ``Alien'') is a wonderfully gifted visual artist when it comes to things like this. The freak storm is a doozy - a wave that capsizes the Albatross and leaves deaths. Even here, though, the sinking of the ship is handled with more bombast than drama. Trapped people below decks are treated with more haste than tension. Indeed, it's difficult to tell who is trapped where.
Coupled with the sunsets beyond the gorgeous ports, this is a visually grand movie to watch. For those of us who love sea yarns and the sea, it is a must-see, in spite of all the drivel we have to put up with to get to the storm. Once you get through all the cliches of the calm waters, there is a 20-minute movie somewhere within the two-hour running time. ILLUSTRATION: BUENA VISTA PICTURES
After a freak storm sinks the Albatross, skipper Christopher Sheldon
(Jeff Bridges), top center, fights to save lives.
Graphic
MOVIE REVIEW
``White Squall''
Cast: Jeff Bridges, Caroline Goodall, John Savage, Scott Wolf,
Balthazar Getty, Jeremy Sistro
Director: Ridley Scott
Screenplay: Todd Robinson
Music: Jeff Rona
MPAA rating: PG-13 (mild sex scenes and the death of a dolphin)
Mal's rating: two and 1/2 stars
Locations: Cinemark, Regal in Chesapeake; Circle 4, Main Gate in
Norfolk; Columbus, Lynnhaven Mall in Virginia Beach
by CNB