ecl@ahuta.UUCP (ecl) (12/26/84)
STARMAN
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Rumor has it that Columbia Pictures turned down an opportunity to
produce E. T. because they were producing STARMAN. Rumor also has it that
word is going around Hollywood that STARMAN is a really good film. See,
some rumors you can believe, some you can't.
For those who have not heard the plot by now, the Voyager space probe
lands on an alien planet around another star and an alien comes to Earth in
answer to its invitation. Never mind that the other star--which we are told
is visible from Earth--must be just outside Pluto's orbit for Voyager to
have arrived there already. That would be a technical detail and this film
doesn't worry too much about them. The alien, who is incorporeal, clones a
copy of Karen Allen's dead husband. The alien, now played by Jeff bridges,
coerces Allen to drive him from Wisconsin to his pickup point in Arizona.
As the alien becomes corporeal, so do the seven wishes he brought with him.
They turn into marbles that he can call on to get him out of scrapes.
The plot of the film will seem very familiar; in fact, it borrows
heavily from CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND and E. T. Karen Allen's
acting is sufficient. She is neither an asset nor a liability to this film.
Then there is Jeff Bridges. It is his performance alone--no one else,
not the script, not the special effects--that saves this film from being a
dog. Ever try to drive a strange car? You find very often you can do it
but you are just a bit clumsy at it. This is exactly how Bridges plays his
role as an alien trying to work this new and unfamiliar body. In one scene
of ALL OF ME, Steve Martin is a man imitating a women imitating a man. With
far less physical comedy experience, Bridges spends an entire film as a man
imitating an alien imitating a man, and Bridges does a better job then
Martin. And at the same time he conveys the same sort of wonder that
Malcolm McDowell had in TIME AFTER TIME.
The special effects are by Industrial Light and Magic, but they are
only a small part of the film. They portray the alien spacecraft as a
mirrored sphere. Impressive looking, but the lower-budget WAVELENGTH had
the same image as well as a number of the plot elements earlier.
This is Jeff Bridges's film. He saves it from foundering on the rocks
and by salvage law it is his film. With his help, this is a zero film (on a
-4 to +4 scale). Without his contribution, it might not have done so well.
(Evelyn C. Leeper for)
Mark R. Leeper
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