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tertain
CHARLES BRITTON
Special to The Jewish News
S
hooting Fish, the new comedy
by co-writer and director
Stefan Schwartz, represents
something of a throwback to
the films of the '60s set in swinging
London.
We no long have the frenetically lib-
erated air, but there's a good deal of
determined larkyness and flash on dis-
play. The film also has a disregard of
plausibility that I found less cheerful
than downright annoying.
Dylan (Dan Futterman, last seen as
the son in The Birdcage) is an American
in London who has teamed up with Jez
(Stuart Townsend); both were raised as
penniless orphans — Jez in England's
Our Lady of Suffering Orphanage and
Dylan in the American Friendly Home
for Boys — and each has dreamt of
attaining the one thing he never had: a
home.
Together they plan to buy a house
and, apparently, settle down.
No, they're not supposed to be gay
(although you could have fooled me);
the third side of the triangle is Georgie
(Kate Beckinsale), who has attracted
both of them. She seems to be a secre-
Charles Britton writes for Copley New
Service.
At The Movie
shooting fish: I. slang, v. t. to
swindle, to rip off to defraud.
tarial temp, but we soon learn that she
also is in the process of becoming an -
M.D.
Dylan and Jez have this really fantas-
tic pad — too literally fantastic: They
live in a natural-gas storage tank, one
of those vast drums that expand and
contract according to their contents. As
with a lot of things about this movie, I
didn't quite understand how they man-
age to do this, for Schwartz isn't partic-
ularly careful to fill in the details, evi-
dently expecting us to go with the flow.
But, hey, Dylan and Jez have fixed
up their dwelling to a fare-thee-well;
the space is presented as wonderfully
curious, full of all sorts of odds and
ends and strange inventions.
The latter are the contributions of
Jez, a kind of screwball inventor who
can make amazing contraptions out of
junk and other refuse. (The person
actually responsible for these gizmos is
Production Designer Max Gottlieb,
whose most recent credit is The Full
Monty.)
Jez suffers from nerdishness, though,
and has a terrible time chatting up the
birds — er, I mean, speaking to young
women.
Dylan is the front man and quite a
talker.
As Shooting Fish begins, the boys
have cooked up an elaborate and highly
unlikely scam involving the sale of
nonexistent advanced computers to
various businessmen.
Georgie, hired for the occasion,
suspects them of wrongdoing, but
their cover story is that they're
modern-day Robin Hoods, taking
from the undeserving rich and giv-
ing to the poor, specifically a home
for orphans. They don't mention
that the orphans are themselves.
That home they want, by the
way, isn't any old house but a stately
mansion, for which they have accu-
mulated some 2 million pounds.
_Midway in the film, one of their
escapades catches up with them, and
they land in prison for a while. The
authorities give them a cell together,
and they decorate it most delightfully.
The Brits are so understanding about
these things.
The plot is full of supposedly amus-
ing twists, some of which are hard to
follow. I don't believe that I blacked out
at any time during the screening, so
quite a bit of continuity got lost some-
where.
Anyway, the characters suddenly
find themselves with a racehorse that is
either worth a fortune in stud fees or is
a nag ready for the gluepot, depending
on which scene in the movie you
choose to believe.
And the plot introduces a home for
children with Down's syndrome that is
in danger of being shut down by some
Above: Writer/Director Stefan Schwartz
on the set of "Shooting Fish."
Left: Stuart Townsend (Jez), Kate
Beckinsale (Georgie) and Dan
Futterman (Dylan) star in Stefan
Schwartz's "Shooting Fish."
nasty guys.
There's a funeral, too, but you'll
have to figure that one out yourself.
Oh, yes, and there's a race that the
horse simply has to win, otherwise the
children will be thrown out of their
home. Guess how that turns out?
Co-writer/director Schwartz (who
with Co-writer/co-producer Richard
Holmes wrote and performed as the
comedy act The Gruber Brothers fol-
lowing their college graduation) seeks
to create a kind of fantasy world, but
aside from a few diverting moments,
Shooting Fish is self-indulgent claptrap.
It carries a PG rating, but I don't
recommend it as a family entertain-
ment, for kids are likely to be bored,
and parents may not relish having to
explain precisely why it is OK for the
characters to cheat.
* 1/2
5/22
1998
96