How`s this for a suspenseful plot? In ”The Best of Times,” Robin Williams plays a man who was the goat of his high school football team 12 years ago when he dropped an easy pass in a game against the town`s archrival. So, he decides to talk his good buddy Kurt Russell, the ace quarterback who threw the fateful pass, into persuading the old team to get together again to challenge their archrivals to ”replay” the game.
What`s going to happen? Do you think Russell will protest at first but eventually cave in? Do you think members of the other team will protest, claiming they have nothing to gain? And when the game is played–excuse me, I mean, if the game is played–do you think Williams` team will fall behind quickly? And then do you think . . . ?
Of course you do. Or as Williams himself said on ”The David Letterman Show” last week, ”Don`t tell `em the ending; they won`t have any reason to pay six bucks to see it.”
Actually Williams should never have told the audience the beginning of
”The Best of Times.” And just as important, he never should have made it.
That`s because he almost singlehandedly ruins what might have have been, even with its predictable story, a sweet exercise in nostalgia and the fulfillment of boyhood dreams.
Williams is at fault because he never, ever enters his character of Jack Dundee. Instead, Williams is forever doing his Comedy Store, frantic comedy act, spitting out dialects, jokes and mannerisms that belong on late night TV or a stage but not in a film.
In fact, it would make perfectly good sense in this movie if someone had turned to him and said, ”Jack, you know, you were a lousy football player, but you just might make a great comic. Forget replaying the game; go to L.A. and see if you can get a guest spot on the Carson show.
Williams has broken character on film before–most recently opposite Walter Matthau in ”The Survivors”–and he does it again here. That`s too bad because he excelled in his last film, ”Moscow on the Hudson,” when he did stay in character after director Paul Mazursky reportedly worked very hard to take the artifice out of his performance.
This time, however, Williams was working with Roger Spottiswoode, a much less experienced director.
Further proof that Williams is at fault is the very credible performance by Kurt Russell as Reno Hightower, a formerly flashy, Joe Namath-type in high school, who has now settled down to a decent, somewhat humdrum, smalltown California life. Russell here resembles no other character he has played in recent memory. It`s a good performance in a bad movie.
So, as we watch this movie go through its predictable paces, we also watch two actors, one in character and one not. And that is an awful lot to ask an audience to suffer through just to see Russell deliver another dependable piece of work.
Of less interest but decent quality are the performances of Holly Palance and Pamela Reed as the wives of our touchdown heroes. All four characters share one cute scene in which the boys try to pretend to give up their interest in football during a dinner party, only to keep sneaking peeks at a silent TV with the picture on. It`s a funny scene that you`ll probably see played on TV a lot in an effort to lure you into the movie.
Don`t bite.
5”The Best of Times”
(STAR)
Mini-review: The worst of cliches
Directed by Roger Spottiswoode; written by Ron Shelton; music by Arthur B. Rubenstein; produced by Gordon Carroll; a Universal release at the Water Tower and outlying theaters. Rated R.
THE CAST
Reno Hightower……………….Kurt Russell
Jack Dundee………………….Robin Williams
Darla……………………….Margaret Whitton
Elly Dundee………………….Holly Palance
Gigi Hightower……………….Pamela Reed
