12 - The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, May 4, 1999

Connery raises stakes
in sexy 'Entrapment'

By Erin Podolsky
Daily Arts Writer
So, you're thinking about
"Entrapment': Old man, old plot, old
hat." Right?
Wrong. In a
rare move in this
tell-all age, the
majority of things
Entrapment revealed in the
"Entrapment"
trailers and com-
mercials take
At Briarwood place in the first
and Showcase 30 minutes of the
film, leaving
another 60 or so
with fresh plot,
fresh intrigue and
fresh coolness.
The whirlwind
game of who's
trying to trap who plays out against the
backdrop of the millennium in New
York, London and Kuala Lumpur, offer-
ing quite a diverse setting to this not-so-
diverse story.

Quintessential gentleman actor Sean
Connery stars as quintessential gentle-
man thief Robert "Mac" MacDougal
along with the red-hot Catherine Zeta-
Jones ("The Mask of Zorro") as Gin
Baker. Together they light up the screen
as a team and as opponents. Desperate
sparks of thieving competition lead to
bonfires of bounty, billions and booty.
Mac and Gin set out to steal an
impossibly secured ancient Chinese
mask, and before you can say "Sean's
got a beard like in 'The Rock' and he's
going underwater!" the two have suc-
ceeded in their illicit task. That's not all
Gin has in mind for her criminal seduc-
tion of the old-enough-to-be-her-great-
grandpa Mac, though.
Next up is the biggest bank in the
world, ready for the pillaging on the eve
of the millennium. Eight billion beauti-
ful dollars await the right key combina-
tion, and Gin, with Mac's help, knows
she can rip it off. But there is danger
waiting in the wings; the final third of
the film is rife with crosses and double-
crosses.
Zeta-Jones proves that her riveting

Zeta-Jones searches for Grandpa Sean.
turn in "Zorro" was no fluke: here she
plays beautiful, smart and crafty
(although at times she whines like a 12-
year-old when Mac doesn't let her get
her way) in a manner that will fuel
many a male's fantasy life. Ron Bass's
script is a damn sight better than the
painful fluff otherwise known as dia-
logue in "What Dreams May Come,"
and director Jon Amiel ("Copycat")
knows precisely when to cut from
Connety's rugged-yet-refined features
to Zeta-Jones' ample, er, assets.


I

While the scores and break-ins that
pepper "Entrapment" aren't ground-
breakingly original, they're presented as
good old-fashioned movie fun. The
film's conclusion holds up to this, too,
avoiding schmaltz or disappointment
and finding just the right tempo to mesh
with the rest. Sometimes it's not so bad
for a movie to be little more than an
afternoon or evening's diversion.
"Entrapment" entertains with the best
of them.
Lost and Found
Warner Brothers
At Briarwood and Showcase
(no stars)
When David Spade played straight
man to Chris Farley, they produced
some successful comedies. With Farlev
gone, Spade works alone in "Lost and
Found" and achieves ... well, not much.
Spade returns to the role of the
respectable loser and bombards us with
scatological humor and middle school
sex jokes. He wanders around his mun-
dane neighborhood and does almost
nothing that is not devoid of humor.
The plot of "Lost and Found" is so
insignificant that it's almost difficult to
follow. Spade plays Dylan, a restaurant
owner, who is in love with his French
neighbor Lila (Sophie Marcea). To
court her, Dylan kidnaps Lila's dog and
offers to help her find the pooch.
There's an attempt to salvage Spade's
tepid leading role when his delivery
boy, Wally (Artie Lange of "Dirty
Work"), who combines Spade's haircut
with Farley's physique, comes into film
midway through. Wally's usefulness
runs out after he smears feces across his
face sending several patrons to the exit.
Watching the waste of electricity that is
"Lost and Found" may produce a dan-
gerous attack of boredom followed by
vomiting.
.Josnah Victor
The Harmonists
Miramax
At the Michigan Theater
Coming out on the heels of "Life is
Beautiful," is Germany's "The
Harmonists." "The Harmonists" is a
"based on a true story" account of a
male singing group that comes to fame
as Hitler comes to power.
At the center of a solid ensemble cast
is Ulrich Noethen as the Jewish per-
former Harry Frommermann, who cre-
ates the Comedian Harmonists.
Noethen's resemblance to Roberto
Benigni, both physically and stylistical-
ly, hurts the movie at times as it recalls
Benigni's goofing in "Life is Beautiful."
But "The Harmonists" has a much
more serious tone, as it recounts the
struggles that the group goes through to
survive not only the racial laws that pro-
hibit them from playing because there
are Jews in the group, but also the inter-
nal problems that the Nazis cause.
"The Harmonists" fails ultimately
because it has a feeling of being under-
developed and hurried, and at time is
plain boring. An example of this is an
idiotic sequence where the group trav-
els to America. The scenes gloss over

the tension that being free of Germany
provokes in favor of "A Hard D
Night"-like clowning.
Ed Sholinsky
Idle Hands
Columbia
Showcase
*
Creaking doors. Listless wind. Pit*
black night. Glow-in-the-dark writing
on the wall. Copious amounts of ganja.
Copious amounts of ganja?
Yes, that's right. "Idle Hands,"'one of
the most derivative entries on the film
industry's already-derivative horror
platter, fuels its misbegotten plot (boy
has hand, hand meets demon, right hand
knows not what the left hand doeth,
demon is exorcised, yada, yada, yada)
with round-the-clock tokers and jokers.
The film sports one of the strictest a
drug messages in years.
Not.
Stuck with an uninspired leading boy
(he's still a few years and about a mil-
lion brain cells off from manhood),
Devon "Teen Beat Pin-up" Sava, "Idle
Hands" has precious few elements to
recommend it. However, those elements
are indeed precious: Elden Hansen
("The Mighty") and the brilliantly s -
donic, so-cute-you-could-eat-him SA
Green ("Austin Powers," TV's "Buffy
the Vampire Slayer") consistently steal
the show as Anton's (Sawa) best buds.
But Green and Hansen aren't nearly
enough to make "Idle Hands" an enjoy-
able experience, and Sawa and a host of
others seem to be barely going through
the motions in this not-so-chilling tale
of terror. Keep both eyes - and hands
- away from this one unless you par-
take in a little herbal refreshmet
beforehand.
Pun intended.
Erin Podolsky
The Dreamlife of
Angels
Sony Pictures Classics
At the Michigan Theater
**
The real shame of "The Dreamlife
of Angels" is that it very well could
have worked. But this story of Isa
(Elodie Bouchez) who comes to the
big city and finds a friend in Marie
(Natacha Regnier) is a boring mess.
Rather than developing the charac-
ters, "The Dreamlife of Angels"
focuses on putting the pair into situ-
ations that bring out only the best
and worst in them. So, the characters
are never really tested.
While Bouchez is rather good and
the film is wonderfully shot but
director Erick Zonca, the lack of sig-
nificant story and Zonca's lack of
ability to tell it impinges on the
film's tolerablity.
Zonca chooses to develop the
film's murky thematic material and
in doing so looses track of every
other important aspect of "Tie
Dreamlife of Angels." So, w xt
Zonca end up with is a boring, pre-
tentious mess.
Ed Sholinskv