THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, November 5, 1996 TAG: 9611050025
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E5 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Movie Review
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, MOVIE CRITIC
LENGTH: 57 lines
GETTING AN ELEPHANT across the country should be a great deal funnier than it is in ``Larger Than Life,'' the new film in which Bill Murray has his biggest co-star yet.
Still, the kids in the audience giggled when Vera, the star elephant, stood on one leg and lifted her trunk.
Bill Murray is an actor-comic rather than just merely a comic and we can admire him for his occasional efforts to do something more than just fall about. I admired even his effort to remake the classic drama ``The Razor's Edge.'' It was a mess but, nonetheless, here was a star who used his money and power to at least try something important. ``Larger Than Life'' is, perhaps, indication that he, too, has to pay the bills.
He plays a lackluster motivational speaker who dreams of nothing more than getting an info-mercial and making big bucks. Then he inherits, from his long-lost circus clown Dad, an elephant - along with a $35,000 bill for property damages. Logically, he calls zoos to try and unload the beast.
Janeane Garofalo, minus laughs but full of toughness, plays a San Diego Zoo person who volunteers to send Vera to Sri Lanka where she (the elephant, not Janeane) will find a suitable male elephant and proceed to happily breed. The problem is in getting Vera all the way across country.
As pictured here, it seems remarkably simple. Most of the comic possibilities are ignored, or kept off camera.
Vera has a huge appetite, but we see only a brief scene in which Bill orders an entire salad bar at a restaurant. Problem solved.
Vera won't get on a train car - but the camera cuts away and we later see her riding blissfully. Comic complication avoided.
You get the idea that director Howard Franklin (who co-directed with Murray the easily-forgotten ``Quick Changes'') was rushing through this one.
The supporting cast, though, is almost worth the price of admission. Most surprising is new hunk-superstar Matthew McConaughey as a psychotic, babbling trucker. McConaughey, who stirred feminine ticketbuyers in ``A Time to Kill,'' overacts to the extent of almost throwing a fit - and he looks like a real slob. Mercifully, most of his newfound fans won't recognize him.
Linda Fiorentino, keeping up her tough image, plays a circus owner with a seductive phone voice. Harve Presnell, Debbie Reynolds' leading man in ``The Unsinkable Molly Brown,'' is unrecognizable, as a lawyer. So are veterans Anita Gillette, as Murray's mom, and Lois Smith, as a tattooed lady.
Murray, unfortunately, spends most of the movie talking to Vera, who never answers. He must feel a little like those boy-actors who always had to talk to Lassie or Flipper, with about the same results. ILLUSTRATION: MOVIE REVIEW
``Larger Than Life''
Cast: Bill Murray, Janeane Garofalo, Matthew McConaughey, Linda
Fiorentino, Lois Smith, Anita Gillette, Harve Presnell
Director: Howard Franklin
MPAA rating: PG (some language)
Mal's rating: ** by CNB