More Than Just T & A

THE SIGN ON the bus featured a stupid-looking Ryan O'Neal standing amidst a harem of bare-assed beauties. Actually they weren't exactly bare-assed; it's just that their ultra-tight blue jeans had plastic windows where the pockets should have been. "So Fine: a revealing comedy," it read. "Coming soon to a theater near you." "So bad," I thought, and continued to fight my way across Mass Ave.

Before I saw So Fine, I tried to think up clever ways to describe what I was sure would be yet another tasteless sex comedy. How many ways are there to say dumb, unfunny, and sexist? I almost wished I had seen Bo's A Change of Seasons just so I could draw some comparisons.

But I pre-judged this movie unfairly. Not that it's my fault; the blame goes to the admen, who know that the best way to get a large audience is to put large breasts on the poster. So Fine has more to show for itself than just the T&A it advertises. What it reveals is not so much skin as careful thought, a clear concept, and even some wit.

Writer-director Andrew Bergman, no doubt a student of Shakespeare, has structured this comedy according to the truest Elizabethan standards of the form. All the elements are there, and in their proper places: a young protagonist, who starts out naive and ends up worldly; a humourously complicated love-at-first-sight affair, complete with bawdy slapstick; a "unifying theme" (quite a pleasant surprise for comedies of late); and, of course, the happy ending where everyone gets married.

Don't expect to see So Fine offered in Eng 12b next semester, though; classical elements do not necessarily make a classic comedy, and So Fine is far from great humor. Too often the slapstick scenes flop for simple lack of originality. Clumsy gunmen run into nuns carrying food; when a tryst is interrupted by the return of the jealous husband, the young lover hides (you guessed it) under the bed; and the final chase scene takes place on-and off-stage during a performance of Verdi's Otello. To be fair, Bergman usually knows how cliched his situations are, and he often satirizes them in clever ways. In a typical over-melodramatic sequence, for example, handsome Bob Fine (O'Neal) meets and falls in love with the voluptuous and married Lira (Mariangela Melato). They gaze intensly at each other, finally they clasp hands. Slowly their lips meet, they kiss deeply. They separate and gaze into each other's eyes. Lira says, "I fuck around."

THE HUMOR THROUGHOUT So Fine is tongue-in-cheek and improbable, but with it Bergman manages to tell a surprisingly well-conceived story. Bob Fine starts out as a naive and inexperienced English professor, who joins his father's floundering dress-making company. After a disastrous first day on the job, his father (Jack Warden) tells him he needs to "get laid," which he promptly does, by Lira. The only trouble is that Lira is married to Mr. Eddie (Richard Kiel), a mean and monstrous loan shark who takes over Fine Fashions. The predictable mayhem ensues, during which young Fine learns how to "be a man," so that by the end of the film he is suave, confident and married, and heard uttering such understatements as "This has been a tremendous growth experience for me."

As a foil to Fine's growth from wimp to "man," the character of Mr. Eddie degenerates from a giant among men (Kiel stands over seven feet tall) to the movie's only loser, an ultimately weak and impotent "non-man." This question of what is and is not a man, posed repeatedly throughout the movie by him and a variety of minor characters unifies the storyline and raises it above the level of simple fluff.

Unfortunately, the performances of the main characters do not do justice to Bergman's script. O'Neal is only somewhat convincing as the nerdy English professor, a man who talks about decor while a beautiful woman is seducing him. When he is called upon to grow in the movie, he manifests the change more in his costume than in his manner. Melato does acceptably as the lusty, Latin, sexually frustrated wife, but she fails to being much originality to this fairly conventional role. As character actors, Warden and Kiel deliver their roles in the usual manner: Warden as the gruff but lovable paternal figure, Kiel (remember Jaws in the James Bond movies?) as the superhuman giant who picks up and throws lots of very heavy objects. Kiel shines only briefly when, in a moment of vanity, he prances like a stud to the tune of Frankie Valli's "Walk Like a Man."

SURPRISINGLY, the cinematography -- often neglected in mass market comedies--really stands out in So Fine. Bergman fills his movie with very precise and stark images, from the perfect whiteness of a steam bath to the glaring neon colors of a disco. Though inconcequential to the plot, the film's most brilliantly conceived scene is an imaginary advertisement for the So Fine blue jeans, in which set, graphics, color, music and choreography all combine to create a powerful image which far outclasses anything currently shown on TV.

Oh, and speaking of the jeans -- I probably should mention them since they are the sole attraction by which Warner Bros, hopes to sell this movie -- yes, they have see-through buns. No, the movie is not about them. They are trivial, minor, almost inconsequential. They help explain how Fine Fashions gets out of debt to Mr. Eddie, and that is all. You might say the ad-men exaggerated a bit.