steven@ism70.UUCP (02/20/85)
VISION QUEST Starring Matthew Modine and Linda Fiorentino. Also starring Michael Schoeffling, Ronny Cox, Harold Sylvester and Charles Hallahan. Directed by Harold Becker. Written by Darryl Ponicsan. Based on a novel by Terry Davis. Produced by Jon Peters and Peter Guber. Photographed by Owen Roizman. Production Designed by Bill Malley. Edited by Maury Winetrobe. Music by Tangerine Dream. From Warner Bros. Pictures (1985) _V_i_s_i_o_n_ _Q_u_e_s_t is many things. It's Guber and Peters doing the Tisch/Avnet (_R_i_s_k_y _B_u_s_i_n_e_s_s) dance. It's slick, deriviative and completely artificial. It's a deal movie, a product to be sold. Mostly, it's the kind of movie where you're supposed to walk out of the theater going, "Honey, let's buy the original motion picture soundtrack featuring songs by Madonna, Journey and various Warner Bros. Records performers." Matthew Modine plays a high school senior who wrestles. He's on a "vision quest" to make this year _h_i_s year by wrestling the unbeatable Shute, two weight classes below him. Through various plot conveniences, his father and he (a divorced family, for realism) take in beautiful Linda Fiorentino for the length of the movie. She plays the Rebecca DeMornay character, a streetwise woman of the world who will teach our goofy, endearing hero about life. Add the above mentioned rock songs and some quasi-eccentric pop philosophy and you can pretty much guess the rest. Darryl Ponicsan and Harold Becker last worked together on _T_a_p_s. Ponicsan also wrote the novel _T_h_e_ _L_a_s_t_ _D_e_t_a_i_l as well as the screenplay _C_i_n_d_e_r_e_l_l_a_ _L_i_b_e_r_t_y. There is the aura of sea talk running through this movie; people say things like they're staring out at the ocean with a wandering mind. Except all this loose jokey dialogue that's supposed to pass for endearing eccentricity feels like a screenwriter's hook. What's meant as inspiring ends up onscreen as manipulative. Details are everything in a movie this formulaic, and Becker and Ponicsan miss the boat on just about all of them. Why isn't there anybody in the hotel kitchen whenever Louden Swain (Modine) and Elmo the cook have their heart to heart talks?? Doesn't Louden's dad even care that there's a busty, ripe 21 year old woman living in the room above his 18 year old son?? Why would Louden's teammates be so nasty to him because he wants to drop a weight class or two?? And why doesn't Linda Fiorentino's character ever look at the world like the artist she's supposed to be (we know she's an artist because she shows Louden a sketch in one scene; the rest of the time she acts "streetwise")?? At least it's an easy movie to form an opinion of. One and a half stars out of four.