Summer Quintet

...More humor can be found in Psycho II Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) has finally returned home from a 22-year stay in a mental institution, where he had been confined after committing a string of murders The Bates Motel still stands, so does that spooky old house on the hill To no one's surprise, the grisly goings-on resume...

...The best offering of the summer is the first hour of War Games, which could be described as a solid made-for-TV movie that somehow wound up in theaters Matthew Broderick plays David, the archetypal computer nerd, a slightly goofy, gawky "underachiever" with little patience for his high school curriculum and discipline He would rather be happily hacking away in his messy bedroom, where a home computer nestles somewhere amid the mountains of printouts...

...Will he be able, with Jennifer's help, to find the mysterious Falken (John Wood), the brilliant designer of the war game computer, and persuade him to help them turn it off...

...Since you know the answer to all of these is Yes, an important point of the film-that war is not a game-is undermined The supposed message disappears as we try to figure out how the moviemakers are going to keep us on the edge of our seats while avoiding the end of the world...

...in the transition is Hitchcock's suspense, in its place are a lot of tricky and mechanical twists...

...Indeed, Ritchie's case refutes the auteur theory, for no trace of the clever, ironic style of his successes can be discerned in his flops So much for the alleged triumph of form over content...

...Gorman balks at the last of these, and perhaps the greatest pleasure of the film is watching Pryor go through his "How do I get myself out of this mess...

...Segment 2 (directed by Steven Spielberg) is scarcely better, it concerns old folk at a retirement home discovering the secret of youth (think young) Segment 3 (directed by Joe Dante) takes a hard look at a soft target, television, while Segment 4 (directed by George Miller) makes those illusion /reality, madness /sanity cliches seem hoarier still...

...This spirit of phony daring lives on in John Landis' script for Segment 1 (which he also directed) The late Vic Morrow plays a racist magically transformed into what he has openly despised a Jew, a black, a Vietnamese Since he assumes these new personae in, respectively, occupied France during World War II, the Deep South, and a jungle overrun with drug-crazed GIs, we are meant to believe that he has earned his just rewards and that he shall learn something about his own intolerance in the process (as we supposedly will about our own prejudices...

...Comparisons with Alfred Hitchcock's original film are inevitable Although I never was very impressed with Psycho (or any other Hitchcock work, except North by Northwest), at least the earlier movie was not gory The sequel, alas, indulges in the bloody special effects that ha\ e become a tiresome trademark of the "splatter" genre Also lost...

...Some help But one should not be so hard on a mindless entertainment such as War Games There is no place like an air-conditioned theater on a hot summer afternoon, no matter what is showing A painless movie is simply a bonus...

...One day he makes two surprising discoveries a cute classmate named Jennifer (the authentically cute Ally Sheedy), and the secret password into what he thinks is a new computer game-Global Thermonuclear War " The game turns out to be the real thing, programmed into a NORAD computer that (implausibly) brings the U S and the USSR to the brink of annihilation Then David has to convince The Authorities he is not some kind of Soviet spy, before bringing everything to a nondisastrous end The film goes astray when the plot machine starts grinding away, damaging the quirky characterizations and amusing dialogue Soon after The Authorities capture David, we are in Suspenseland, where every scene is staged as the answer to a melodramatic question Will David escape...

...Ritchie is not the victim of a split personality s a director, he has been at the mercy of his screenwriters...

...Why this movie was produced at all baffles me The TV show's cult following that has flourished over the past two decades cannot make Rod Serling's effort worthy of a tribute Most of the initial tales, written by science-fiction hacks, used the medium of fantasy to deliver embarrassingly moralistic messages that were regarded as courageous 20 years ago...

...These characters' lives intersect in a most implausible way during an episodic story that wobbles between satire and slapstick Buried beneath all this confusion is the germ of a droll idea about the panic brought on by unemployment Unfortunately, The Survivors does not give rise to more than a couple of smiles...

...As the seconds tick away on the computer clock, will David come up with the right commands...

...Will they manage to return to the NORAD command center before it is sealed off...

...The budget for Superman III, by contrast, seems to have fallen prey to Reaganomics The stunts and special effects are on a noticeably smaller scale than they were in the two preceding movies This outing is enjoyable nonetheless, in large part because of Richard Pryor...

...On Screen SUMMER QUINTET BY ROBERT ASAHINA When Michael Ritchie is good, he excels Downhill Racer, The Candidate, The Bad News Bears, Semi-Tough, and particularly Smile rank among the most enjoyable films of the past 15 years When he is bad, he is rotten Prime Cut, The Island, An Almost Perfect Affair, and now The Survivors are unmitigated disasters...

...routine "I'm not really with these people," he feebly assures Superman when Webster and his assistants bombard the Man of Steel with the deadly green rays...

...In the end, naturally, the world and Superman are saved, though not before David and Leslie Newman's script sub jects the superhero to a variety of tabulations Not the least of them is his 20th high school reunion in Smallville He has a run-in with the local bully (Gavan O'Herlihy) and a fling with the smalltown girl who stayed behind, Lana Lang (Annette O'Toole, charming instead of bitchy as she often has been in the past) The Newmans paint a surprisingly affectionate picture of Smallville, as well as a more predictably sardonic one of Metropolis ("The Big Apricot") And there is humor in their characterizations, particularly Lorelei Ambrosia (Pamela Stephenson), Webster s "psychic nutritionist," a Judy Holliday-like dumb blonde who does not let on that she reads Kant's Critique of Pure Reason in her spare time Superman III is so amiable and funny that its fate at the hands of many critics surprises me a bit It has been disparaged for lacking the "mythic" dimension of the comic books and the preceding movies My chief complaint, by contrast, is that the humor disappears precisely when the "mythic" intrudes About halfway through, Superman, poisoned by impure kryptonite, turns into everything he should not be a surly antihero who shirks his duty to save lives and threatens to wind up on the Bowery The good in him triumphs only after a tiresome "mythic" battle between his two opposing "selves " I'm afraid the Newmans have been reading too much Leslie Fiedler, with his speculations on how much Superman must resent hiding behind Clark Kent's meek persona...

...It should be noted that the greatest expense of the film was three lives (including Morrow's) sacrificed to Landis' stunts and special effects Had the film been a masterpiece, the price would have been too high, as matters stand, Twilight Zone The Movie is the costliest piece of garbage ever to foul the screen...

...Familiarity breeds contempt for Twilight Zone The Movie, a four-part anthology using different directors based on the former television series Perhaps "lifted from" would be a better way to characterize the film's relationship to its source, I recognized Segments 2 and 4 as remakes of old installments They were better on the small screen...

...The most annoying aspect of the conclusion is the feeble "logic" that finally disables the computer The machine has to be taught that tic-tac-toe is a no-win competition when played according to simple rules that a child can grasp And the final "message" of the movie belongs in The Twilight Zone The only way to win-tic-tac-toe or thermonuclear war-is not to play...

...The director (Richard Franklin) and the writer (Tom Holland) emphasize the obvious with such insistence that the movie legenerates into an exercise in spotting the references First there is the shower scene, followed by the eye in the peephole, plenty of knives are pointedly lying around, too In genera), the filmmakers seem uncertain whether to exploit the audience's familiarity for the purpose of laughter or terror The only constant factor is Perkins, who is just as creepily dissociated as ever Meg Tilly, that fine young actress last seen in Tex, is wasted in a silly role, as is Vera Miles (besides Perkins, the only holdover from the original...

...The comedian plays a bumbler named Gus Gorman, who finds his true calling on the back of a matchbook cover ("Learn to be a Computer Programmer") He soon becomes adept enough to embezzle a small fortune from the multinational conglomerate he works for This firm is headed by Ross Webster (Robert Vaughn), a businessman smart enough not to discourage initiative in his employees Instead of firing Gus, Webster enlists him in some wild schemes- cornering the world coffee market by ordering a weather satellite to decimate Colombia's crop, creating an artificial oil shortage by having fleets of supertankers stop dead in the ocean, finally, destroying Superman (Christopher Reeve) by means of a monster electronic brain equipped with a kryptonite ray gun...

...To be fair, even an alchemist could not transmute Michael Leeson's leaden script for The Survivors, a would-be comedy about unemployment, survivalism and attempted murder In the role of Sonny Paluso, a service station owner whose business literally catches fire, Walter Matthau displays his repertoire of grunts, groans and grimaces Robin Williams runs through his standup shtick as Donald Quinelle, a sales executive, he is axed by a parrot and then becomes a fanatical survivalist Jerry Rcid grins and goofs around as an out of-work hit man named Jack Locke, his wife, suspecting him of infidelity, sighs with relief when she learns the actual reason for his mysterious business trips...