Books, Arts & Manners: Deadly Amnesia, Deadlier Recall

Some movies are so drab and dreary —even if they purport to be giddy comedies, and perhaps especially then —that you could grind your teeth down to the gums writing about this stuff. But that is what’s out there, and the reader is entitled to be warned by being made to suffer a bit vicariously. Most of the movies now being produced are aimed deliberately at the youth market, compared to which your average flea market is Sotheby’s. I have tried to stick to those that aspire a little higher—say, sweet 16 going on jaded 17—but even these are foolish, bedraggled, pitiful. Take three samples.

Desperately Seeking Susan, by Susan Seidelman, a fairly recent NYU Film School graduate, has received an unfair share of raves along with a few discerning brickbats. I missed Miss Seidelman’s first feature. Smithereens, the sort of movie where, I gather, the fuss had less to do with quality than with its having been brought in at a mere $80,000. But the new one cost $5 million, which makes it $4,999,999.98 in excess of the worth of Miss Seidelman’s ideas. A ludicrous scenario by Leora Barish has Roberta, a mousy, repressed New Jersey housewife, ardently following around Susan—a swinger and drifter, one of whose lovers places messages for her in the want ads Roberta reads—who now sports ancient Egyptian earrings she has appropriated from a fleeting lover just murdered by his accomplice in an art theft. By a series of complicated and preposterous incidents, Roberta, while wearing Susan’s jacket, is hit over the head, becomes amnesiac, is mistaken for Susan both by the other thief out to get her and the earrings, and by Dez, a pal of Susan’s main man, who is supposed to be watching over her in the latter’s absence. Meanwhile, the real Susan ends up in Fort Lee getting involved with Roberta’s philandering husband, while . . .

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John Simon

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Some movies are so drab and dreary —even if they purport to be giddy comedies, and perhaps especially then —that you could grind your teeth down to the gums writing about this stuff. But that is what’s out there, and the reader is entitled to be warned by being made to suffer a bit vicariously. Most of the movies now being produced are aimed deliberately at the youth market, compared to which your average flea market is Sotheby’s. I have tried to stick to those that aspire a little higher—say, sweet 16 going on jaded 17—but even these are foolish, bedraggled, pitiful. Take three samples.

Desperately Seeking Susan, by Susan Seidelman, a fairly recent NYU Film School graduate, has received an unfair share of raves along with a few discerning brickbats. I missed Miss Seidelman’s first feature. Smithereens, the sort of movie where, I gather, the fuss had less to do with quality than with its having been brought in at a mere $80,000. But the new one cost $5 million, which makes it $4,999,999.98 in excess of the worth of Miss Seidelman’s ideas. A ludicrous scenario by Leora Barish has Roberta, a mousy, repressed New Jersey housewife, ardently following around Susan—a swinger and drifter, one of whose lovers places messages for her in the want ads Roberta reads—who now sports ancient Egyptian earrings she has appropriated from a fleeting lover just murdered by his accomplice in an art theft. By a series of complicated and preposterous incidents, Roberta, while wearing Susan’s jacket, is hit over the head, becomes amnesiac, is mistaken for Susan both by the other thief out to get her and the earrings, and by Dez, a pal of Susan’s main man, who is supposed to be watching over her in the latter’s absence. Meanwhile, the real Susan ends up in Fort Lee getting involved with Roberta’s philandering husband, while . . .