Screen

...Both work to keep the film's lyricism in counterpoint with its humor...

...BLAND ISN'T BEAUTIFUL SCHUMACHER'S 'COUSINS' Cousins will strike different audiences in differ-ent ways, depending on whether or not they've seen its original, the French Cousin, Cousine, which I have not...

...Americanization" can roughly be translated into the new dominant Hollywood aesthetic for yuppie audiences: bland is beautiful...

...His drawbacks, and the plot's flimsiness, make one lose interest midway through...

...But nothing too refined or intelligent occurs either...

...Why make the movie at all...

...One character also bores immediately, Keith Coogan as Danson's punk teenage son, who utters some very cuttable lines about Uzi submachine guns, fcor some quaint reason, many critics think the part funny...

...There was no special reason to film in Canada, except for an aggressive local film office luring American production teams northwest and eager technical crews looking for contracts...

...Watching her work with even a mediocre script is a pleasure not to be dismissed...

...They have naughty but chaste fun by not being naughty-until, at last, more serious romance evolves...

...She has her own affairs too, from a strange knack of always marrying men about to die, which prompts the film's best line from Gina De Angelis as a salty grandma...

...His massive, chiseled face is a cubist's dream, but he is not the romantic lead this film needed...

...Paramount Studios, the film's distributor, refers to it not as a "remake" but an "Americanization" following the model of Three Men and a Cradle from the French Cesar award winner of the same name...

...At a wed-ding scene (there are three in the film, for, as someone observes, weddings are big business these days), she meets Larry (Ted Danson, of NBC's "Cheers...

...Norma Aleandro (of The Official Story) is also enjoyably stalwart as Rosellini's mother in a Moonstruck mode, providing plenty of momma mias at romantic goings on...

...That's about as good as-it gets-or about as good as it can, given Hollywood's sense of...

...TOM O'BRIEN...

...ellini and Danson, enact, at first absentmindedly, a mild re-venge-long Platonic talks, fjord swims, and exchanges of gifts that they know each other's partner despises...

...From her father, Roberto Rosellini, she inherits dark, melancholy Italianate features that make her smile, if possible, even more radiant...

...Danson is competent but not charismatic...

...Here this results in our access to some delightful views of the colorful ethnic variety in Western Canada, an old Chinatown, some prim Victorian suburbs, a few hemlocked beaches, and many long narrow Pacific inlets-really just fjords at western longitudes...

...As a result, Cousins is better than most American comedies, but nowhere near a good French one...

...From her mother, Ingrid Bergman, she derives her shy smile, rounded face, bemused laugh, and giant, plane-tary luminous eyes...

...A simple rationale is the normal commercial desire to pillage a successful work with a proven box-office record...

...Those who view it for the first time will regard it as a mostly pleasant confec-tion, with just enough spice to keep it interesting...

...Sean Young is good, even simply as a physical contrast to Rosellini: she's tautly built, with sharp features and strongly lined mouth that complements the former's poetic roundness...

...Canadians make money the old-fashioned way: they work for it...

...Director Joel Schumacher and screenwriter Stephen Metcalf sometimes give their ensemble sweetly camp material, especially in a fine satire on contemporary marriages in a scene at a Disney-style "Weddingland...

...This is both fruitful and baneful...

...Only one gross scene occurs in Cousins, involving two obligatory bits of vulgarity near the film's opening-just in case any fourteen-year-olds wander in and need to be reassured...

...While our country grants ever more college degrees, our media remain gun-shy of the slightest bit of real sophistication...

...At its best, Cousins is diverting froth...

...The leading scenic attraction of Cousins is Isabella Rosellini, one of the greatest tributes to genetics in film, or perhaps all human history...

...Americanization" aims at pleasing the upscale portion of the native audience with something more refined than the current generic cdmedy for adolescents, the "gross-out" film...

...But viewers of the original will wonder why this new film was made at all: it has little of Cousin, Cousine's widely reputed wit and sexual effervescence...

...what an intelligent audience will buy these days...

...Rosellini does well as Maria, the wholesome wife of a BMW salesman, the constant philanderer Tom (William Peterson, who makes obnoxiousness bearable, even pitiable...

...The best element in the film is the scenery, with plentiful use of spectacular backdrops in Vancouver, British Columbia...

...What keeps the comic soap opera going is some tart writing and a (mostly) good supporting cas,t...

...But lately, this rationale has become more precise, with a trend toward finding light comedy in foreign sources...

...They become aware that Larry's wife (Sean Young) has fallen for Tom's dubious charms...