Film

...U Hits and Misses Prizzi's Honor An entertaining and occasionally hilarious Mafioso-romance-thriller, combining an unsentimentalized depiction of life inside the Cosa Nostra with a parody of the gangster genre...

...The film boasts assured direction by veteran John Huston, Nicholson at his near best, and a scene-stealing performance by Anjelica Huston as a disgraced mob signorina...

...The problem is that Perfect takes on more themes than it can handle...

...Furthermore, Perfect's message cuts two ways: The members of the health club are depicted as shallow, self-centered, fatuous individuals, but we are also asked to regard them sympathetically as innocent victims of journalistic ridicule...

...Winners of the competition are declared, but the larger questions remain unresolved...

...But there is no agreement, among the contestants or the judges, as to what "looking the best" means...

...This is the message conveyed by two recent releases that exploit the exercise and bodybuilding fads: Perfect and Pumping Iron II: The Women...

...he helps her work an exercise machine designed to augment what she calls her "pride and joys...

...George Butler's Pumping Iron II: The Women shows a more extreme manifestation of the self-improvement movement: competitive bodybuilding...

...She apparently buys this tripe, but refuses to be interviewed...

...The debate is further confused by commercial considerations: Female bodybuilding is potentially big business, and its promoters fear that women may be turned off by the image of physiques that are visually indistinguishable from those of muscle men...

...Perfect delivers a reasonably convincing portrayal of a "hip" reporter at work...

...The location photography is stunning, and the two leading actors won awards at the Cannes festival...

...Such practices tend to call into question the documentary authenticity of the entire production...

...Bridges now focuses on a Los Angeles health spa...

...One minute, Travolta is watching sweaty bodies...

...she wants to have plastic surgery and, in the meantime, acquires a reputation as "the most used piece of equipment in the gym...

...The movie contents itself, however, with merely raising issues (though it skirts the use of steroids...

...Director Mario Camus (The Beehive) explores the themes of oppression and revenge—the oppressed being peasants still living in feudal conditions in the 1960s...

...the next, he is going to prison in defense of the First Amendment...

...The other subject (Marilu Henner) gets lucky when a hunky male stripper falls for her large breasts...

...Her hugely muscled body makes Michelangelo's David look like an underdeveloped sissy...

...Pumping Iron II is a flashier and more accomplished work than its 1977 predecessor, which focused on male bodybuilders...

...Travolta does his best acting since Saturday Night Fever, and Jamie Lee Curtis gives an appealing performance...

...The film squeezes in as many other trendy bits as the narrative can hold: a John De Lorean-type case, enough disco music to fill a soundtrack album, reflections on journalistic ethics, male strip joints, and recognizable celebrities appearing as themselves—Carly Simon, Lauren Hutton, and Jann Wenner, the real-life editor of Rolling Stone...

...Perfect presents the story of a hotshot Rolling Stone reporter (John Travolta) assigned to do a feature on the health-club phenomenon...

...The fiendishly complicated plot centers on the coast-to-coast love between a seasoned hit man (Jack Nicholson) and a mysterious woman (Kathleen Turner) who turns out to be his free-lance counterpart...

...Director James Bridges previously demonstrated a nose for trendiness in Urban Cowboy which, like Perfect, was adapted from an article by Aaron Latham...

...Does it mean developing the biggest muscles possible...

...It follows four contenders for the 1983 Caesar's Palace World Cup Championship, recording their grueling training, their private conversations, their intimate moments with boyfriends and trainers, and their final showdown...

...Travolta looks into the lives of two rather pathetic habitues...

...the mind need no longer complicate matters...

...Still, Butler's decision to make this new film "into a real story with all the dramatic value of fictional film" brings about a loss of credibility...

...Nonetheless, the two begin having an affair, and the reporter tries another tack: Health clubs, he observes, are the new singles bars—places where the lonely and sex-starved can meet and exhibit their bodies while preserving the pretext of self-improvement...

...In a single glance, our reporter-hero becomes attracted to a sexy aerobics instructor (Jamie Lee Curtis), and he plans to base his piece on an interview with her...

...He uses parallel editing for suspense, a conventional action-enhancing musical score, and a number of scenes that clearly look and sound as though they had been staged for the camera...

...Does it mean looking fit and strong yet womanly—and what is womanly...

...Most compelling is the spectacle of women arduously building extraordinary musculature, spurred by a desire, as one of them puts it, for "looking the best that we possibly can...

...One (Lar-aine Newman) believes that "if you perfect yourself you'll be loved...

...These can bring satisfaction, happiness, and even love, we are told...

...These issues are brought to the fore by the presence in the competition of Bev Francis, a former discus and javelin thrower and champion poweriifter...

...This imperfect movie neglects to do what Aaron Latham did in his original article—examine the social and cultural meaning of the health club...

...The Holy Innocents This powerful social drama from Spain has become that country's most successful production...

...the instructor was once badly burned by the press...

...To obtain the interview and gain her confidence, he tells her that the health club fad is the all-American realization of the Emersonian ideal of self-reliance...