ARTS The Michigan Daily Monday, February 10, 1992 Page 5 Dead poets die hardest The makers of Dead Poets Society and Die Hard team up to concoct another Sean Connery bomb Medicine Man dir. John McTiernan 1 1 by Austin Ratner W ith the talented John McTiernan (director of Die Hard) and Tom Schulman (writer of the Oscar-win- ning screenplay for Dead Poets Society) collaborating on Medicine Man, you might expect a riveting, fast-paced, high-action thriller ... set in a quiet New England boarding school? Only true potato-heads would've thought to team this odd couple, unless maybe they were planning a sequel to Toy Soldiers. The film is set in a beautiful, sup- posedly South American rain forest, making Medicine Man a case of the right place, the wrong director, the wrong actors and the wrong script. Promoted as an adventure film with a socially-conscious angle, Medicine Man is a surprising waste of energy. Not only does the film fail to deliver the adventure or social commentary it promises, but it also fails to capi- talize on the strong visual and ethnic background available. There are far too few shots of the rain forest - most of the film is confined to the small clearing around the hut of Dr. Robert Campbell (played by Sean Connery, sporting a gratuitous ponytail), where he's been conducting research to cure cancer with some local jun- gle fruit. The Brazilian Indians who live in the area and assist Campbell provide the most genuine and re- freshing scenes in the film, but none of them play central roles. Director McTiernan simply seems to have no idea what to do without a lot of guns and explosives or his native characters. Rather than make use of the Indians as charac- ters, when he chooses to focus on them, McTiernan tends to show them running around naked. In one absurd sequence where the Indians are working in a long line at a table, he pans across the whole row of exposed tushies and then - to make charges of voyeurism hard to deny - the row of naked breasts. The queer chirpy drum and pipe mu- sic which accompanies this scene makes it seem even more ridiculous and misconceived. The movie does focus on Campbell and research assistant Dr. Rae Crane (Lorraine Bracco). We are condemned to nearly two hours Sean, what are you thinking? First Highlander 11: Electric Boogaloo, now Hollywood Pictures' Medicine Man? of banal, forced dialogue between these two irritating people as they meet, don't fall in love (understandably) and go off on a trip through the jungle in search of an Indian medicine man and the cure for cancer - which Campbell found and then lost. Connery, who conveys a steady charm whether orbiting Jupiter or commanding a submarine, suffers little from the often nonsensical script. Bracco (Goodfellas), on the other hand, doesn't fare as well. The movie's heavy reliance on the dia- logue, which someone erroneously decided was cute, along with the script's poor definition of character and psychological circumstance, leave Bracco with nothing to offer but an annoying New York accent and a nice figure. Probably one reason the movie is so long is that Bracco delivers her lines like Edith Bunker with Novocain in her mouth. During most of the movie, I was tempted to stand up and scream out Sam Kinison's trademark, "SAAAYYY IT!" (Melanie Griffith has a similar diffi- culty with speaking at normal speeds). Even if the pace was quicker, it would do little more than get us out of the theater sooner - faster pacing doesn't help when the conflicts are never particularly clear or interesting, to begin with. Such social evils as capitalistic disregard for the sanctity of foreign ecologies and cultures are clearly supposed to be present, but they play second fiddle to Crane's and Campbell's excruciating rela- tionship. It's never clear why the govern- ment in this generic South American region is building a road through the Indians' home, or why they would start bulldozing at night - or why the laborers care so much about the project that they actually beat Campbell with sticks when he tries to stop them. Such blurry presenta- tions sap the movie of any possibili- ties for tension or drama. MEDICINE MAN is playing at Showcase and Briarwood. Unfortunately, Lorraine Bracco and Sean Connery do not swing to a violent death at the end of Medicine Man. * , II( Thurber on Crime James Thurber Mysterious Press S.O.S.! I was surrounded by a pile of magazines, an- thologies, and journals, thoroughly exhausted from frantically skimming millions of current words, hop- ing beyond hope that I would find something written for the sole purpose of amusing people. It wasn't Dave Barry, God forbid, that I was looking for, but rather a short story with an honest-to-goodness plot, written with the intention of making people chuckle. So what was the result of my quest? I found myself wading, then swimming, and then carried away in a del- uge of angst. Today's short stories take themselves way too seriously, and drowning in the overwhelming melancholia has become a serious threat. Then a piece of driftwood floated by. It was, and I am eternally grateful for it, the new collection, 0 Thurber's humor is always based in the uncommon domain of the common man, at once subtle and hilarious. Thurber on Crime. Just the thing for today's market - there's nothing like it anymore (with the possible ex- ception of Garrison Keillor). I suppose the powers that be decided that if no one today will write like Thurber, we may as well recycle the good, old stuff. If Thurber on Crime is anything, it's fun. James Thurber, dead now for over 30 years, was best known for "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" and his work *0 for the New Yorker. He gave the world a fascinating array of material - from a Broadway show to those bizarre and pleasantly unartistic cartoons. And, of course, his writing. Thurber is what a humorist ought to be. He doesn't amuse by taking vicious swipes, nor does he create in- credibly witty characters who spout epigrams that have been carefully thought out or stolen from quick- tongued acquaintances. Thurber's humor is always based in the uncommon domain of the common man, at once subtle and hilarious. Thurber on Crime, you see, isn't a detailed collec- tion of hard-core crime fiction, as the title might sug- gest. It is instead an excuse to bring together some of Thurber's work and publish it for a new generation to discover, or an old one to recall. The book's crime con- nection is tenuous at times, but most of the pieces are close enough to forgive the editor, Robert Lopresti, for wanting to slip in just one more of Thurber's whimsi- cal tales. The book's subjects range from feature articles telling everything you ever wanted to know about bloodhounds (a Thurber favorite) to an illustrated ac- companiment to Poe's The Raven. Thurber also pens delightfully warped half-page fairy tales (the moral to his version of Little Red Riding Hood is "It is not so easy to fool little girls nowadays as it used to be.") and manages to convince the reader that Macbeth is ac- tually a murder mystery - and you'll never guess who dunnit. The most enjoyable story, though, is "The Catbird Seat." If this were the only thing Thurber had ever written, it would still deserve a book of its own. The way in which the main character, Mr. Martin, (of See BOOKS, Page 8 Joanou is a deluded Analysis Final Analysis dir. Phil Joanou by Marie Jacobson Billed "a psychological thriller," Final Analysis is plagued with delusions of grandeur. A poorly- made, poorly-developed Hitchcock imitation, Analysis mistakenly fan- cies itself as the epitome of sophis- tication rather than the superfluous, flatulent film audiences flocked to last weekend. The initial plot isn't without some interesting twists and turns: two beautiful sisters (Uma Thur- man and Kim Basinger) meticu- lously plan a murder and inge- niously enlist an unwitting psy- chologist (Richard Gere) to extri- cate them with the insanity defense. When the psychologist discovers their devious plot, he must save himself and expose the conniving sisters for what they really are - deadly psychopaths. All goes relatively well until the Basinger character must change from a passive, abused wife to a cal- culating killer. Then we discover, in scene after scene, just what bad act- ing is all about: goofy, imploring looks; cross-eyed, maniacal laugh- ter; choking, gulping sobs; and hy- per-dramatic soliloquies. It's enough to make you hurl. Whoops, wrong movie - but at least Garth and Wayne don't pre- tend to be real actors. The others fare slightly better. Gere continues to revel in his anal- retentive roles. Eric Roberts is con- centratedly creepy as the gangster husband who gets his head clonked - , Hot, hot, hot. Gere and Basinger steam it up in the latest bomb from the director of U2 Rattle and Hum. At least Gere's better looking than Bono. I vLeI AJ in, and Thurman artfully presents a troubled, complex character. But in this setting, with a second-rate de- tective drama soundtrack, cheap chills, and stagy cinematography, nothing can rescue the film from superfluity. Analysis passes up every oppor- tunity to explore the issues com- prising its plot. Rather than explore the very real pain experienced by molested and abused women, the film depicts them as deranged, hys- terical crackpots. It quickly condemns the insanity defense without even the slightest deference to the complexities of the law and champions lame thrills rather than a ethical dilemmas. My diagnosis? Final Analysis is a com- plete basket case. FINAL ANALYSIS is playing at Showcase and Briarwood. S won* who what where when 0 Are you a concerned citizen for the Arts in Michigan? Join local professionals and hear what they have to say in a free lecture entitled "The Arts in a Market Econ- the Trueblood Theatre, 105 South State, at 7 p.m. Call 663-0696. Feelin' blue? The smooth sounds of the a cappella group, The Mel- information, call 936-ARTS. For a good dose of culture, check out Tuesday's Campus Orchestra- Campus Chamber Orchestra, with