
DATE: Thursday, July 10, 1997               TAG: 9707090054

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E7   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Movie Review 

SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, MOVIE CRITIC 

                                            LENGTH:   52 lines

HISTORIC DRAMA-COMEDY PAINFUL, BORING TO WATCH

IF ABSURDIST drama-comedy is your bag, ``Children of the Revolution'' might be endured rather painlessly, particularly if you're determined to find something ``different.'' In plotting, this satire of gung ho politics gone haywire has its twists but as comedy, it is pretty laughless.

This is in spite of the fact that the leading lady, the always-eccentric Judy Davis, works hard.

Davis, returning to her Australian homeland after working with everyone from David Lean (``Passage to India'') to Woody Allen (``Husbands and Wives'') plays Joan Fraser, a fervent Communist campaigner in the '40s. She writes passionate love letters to Josef Stalin, vowing to be his voice in Australia. This gets her an overnight visit to the Kremlin where an over-excited Stalin dies in bed with her.

She returns home pregnant with Stalin's love child, determined to raise him as a revolutionary supreme. He grows up to actually like jails and to become a union organizer whom, we are told but not shown, leads Australia to the brink of civil war in 1989. This momentous situation is only vaguely explained.

In fact, this whirlwind dash through four decades is rather hastily structured by writer-director Peter Duncan, who seems to think Davis' harridan-screechings are quite funny.

The cast is peppered with some real curiosities, including the two most obscure best-actor Oscar winners. F. Murray Abraham (``Amadeus'') plays Stalin with no real flair. Geoffrey Rush (``Shine'') has a supporting role as Davis' token husband. Sam Neill (``Jurassic Park'') is Nine, a kind of not-so-secret agent, who also covets Davis.

Richard Roxburgh as Joe, Stalin's illegitimate son, comes closest to a real comic style, but he has little with which to work.

Super-eccentrics may feel in the mood to make something of ``Children of the Revolution.'' The rest of us will find it perilously close to boring. ILLUSTRATION: MIRAMAX

F. Murray Abraham, left, plays Josef Stalin and Judy Davis is his

Communist campaigner in ``Children of the Revolution.''

Graphic

MOVIE REVIEW

``Children of the Revolution''

Cast: Judy Davis, Sam Neill, F. Murray Abraham, Geoffrey Rush,

Richard Roxburgh, Rachel Griffiths

Director and Writer: Peter Duncan

MPAA rating: R (brief bedroom nudity, some language)

Mal's rating: two stars

Location: Naro in Norfolk