
DATE: Sunday, August 10, 1997               TAG: 9708090037

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E10  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Movie Review

SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, MOVIE CRITIC 

                                            LENGTH:   54 lines

DIALOGUE CARRIES COMIC ``LOVE AND OTHER CATASTROPHES''

``LOVE AND Other Catastrophes,'' a tiny-budgeted Australian comedy, is best when it deals with life on campus - a milieu that has been all but ignored in recent movies. After all, we get love, or the pursuit of it, in movies all the time.

``Love and Other Catastrophes'' was written in two weeks and shot in 17 days, on a budget of a mere $37,000. The lack of budget shows at times, but the emphasis on dialogue and screwball situations is refreshing, if only because no one else currently tries it.

Director Emma-Kate Croghan, making her film debut with a cast of fellow twentysomething unknowns, delivers several very funny moments. We often wish she had gone further and done more, but while her film is not particularly special, it is mildly diverting.

She has characters, for example, who are worried about dodging their academic supervisor or the fact that they owe $663 for overdue library books. These, mind you, are serious students. This is not ``Animal House.''

Alice, one of the three women among the five main characters, is four years overdue on her thesis on ``Doris Day as a Feminist Warrior.'' A self-proclaimed perfectionist, she is looking for the perfect guy, and will accept no less. He must be truthful, left-handed and like the same movies she does. She's having trouble finding him.

She spots Ari, the Warren Beatty of the campus who is a part-time gigolo, while she ignores Michael, the shy medical student who has a crush on her.

Ari claims that he's all torn up, in an existential way, between the philosophies of Jung and Lennon (John).

Mia, Alice's roommate, is reluctant about making a commitment to Danni, her aggressive lesbian girlfriend who wants to move in. They have an argument.

Meanwhile, Mia goes from office to office seeking a transfer so that she can sign up for her favorite lecturer next semester. Professor Leach, the bureaucrat who most blocks her, accommodates by dropping dead midway through his iced doughnut.

Nothing much happens plotwise and the photography is pretty fuzzy, but you can't often find comedies where the people talk about existentialism these days. It's pretty much like one of those all-night bull sessions back in the dormitory - only, blessedly, it doesn't last all night. ILLUSTRATION: Graphic

MOVIE REVIEW

``Love and Other Catastrophes''

Cast: Alice Garner, Frances O'Connor, Matthew Dyktynski, Matt

Day, Radha Mitchell

Director: Emma-Kate Croghan

MPAA rating: R (sexual situations, language)

Mal's rating: Two 1/2 stars

Location: Naro Theater in Norfolk