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From: leeper@mtgzy.att.com (Mark R. Leeper)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews
Subject: REVIEW: SCENES FROM A MALL
Summary: r.a.m.r. #00938
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Message-ID: <1991Feb27.132814.14777@cbnewsj.att.com>
Date: 27 Feb 91 13:28:14 GMT
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			      SCENES FROM A MALL
		       A film review by Mark R. Leeper
			Copyright 1991 Mark R. Leeper

	  Capsule review:  If you think it is funny to see adults
     argue in public, perhaps this comedy is for you.  Then again,
     if you do think so, who knows what else you would like?
     Another Beverly Hills comedy that makes this Easterner wonder
     if he is missing the point.  Rating: -1 (-4 to +4).

     Somebody once told me they thought they could listen to and watch Woody
Allen reading white pages out of the phone book and it would be funny.  His
facial expressions are just so funny that anything he does is just naturally
hilarious.  Bette Midler can also be very funny.  So the question is, how
long can this couple play a loving and quarreling couple walking around a
mall and still carry the film on their innate cuteness.  Well, based on the
results in Paul Mazursky's SCENES FROM A MALL, the two of them might be able
to carry the premise for up to about ten minutes.  After that, they
definitely need an assist from a script and the script in SCENES FROM A MALL
by Roger Simon and director Mazursky does little to help.  At least it does
little unless you think that everything connected with Beverly Hills is
really cute.  If your idea of a good joke is seeing a line of cars with each
driver talking on a cellular phone, perhaps you will enjoy this film, but I
would bet you will find far more on-target and funny in L.A. STORY.

     On their sixteenth wedding anniversary, lovey-dovey couple Nick (played
by Woody Allen) and Deborah (played by Bette Midler) go to a mall on an
errand.  There they get into a fight over fidelity and decide to break up.
They reconcile and decide they still love each other.  They fight again and
break up.  Then they get together again.  Can you figure the plot from that
point on?  Yes, I thought you could.  All this fighting and loving is done
in front of random strangers.  That's what there is.  It is a film with a
beginning and a middle, but no end.  It is just arbitrarily cut off at the
end of a cycle.  It would be one thing if these people were at least great
conversationalists.  But this is no MY DINNER WITH ANDRE.  About all you
learn from the conversation is that these are two very ordinary and
superficial people.  Do you really care where they got their roll-top desk
and which of them is going to get it in the divorce settlement?  I know I do
not.  You could easily save the admission price by going to your local mall
and eavesdropping on the people there.

     There are some things that Mazursky is more anxious to show us than
others.  We do get to see the names of a lot of stores at the mall, many of
which--surprise! surprise!--are chains that you might find at your own local
mall.  How fortuitous for the financing of the film!  Considerably less care
is taken to show us what the characters are doing with their packages.  At
one point each has bought a complete change of clothes which they are
wearing.  No explanation is given for what happened to the clothes they had
been wearing.  I guess in Beverly Hills, everything you own is considered
disposable.

     If you genuinely find great humor in the awkward situation of seeing
adults argue in public, this predominantly one-joke comedy might be for you.
If not, it offers you surprisingly little considering the names involved.  I
give it a -1 on the -4 to +4 scale.

					Mark R. Leeper
					att!mtgzy!leeper
					leeper@mtgzy.att.com