Rushes: Rushes: Aug. 6, 1984

BEST DEFENSE

The East is the Middle East, where Lieut. Eddie Murphy is demonstrating a dubiously designed tank to dubiously inclined Arab buyers. The West is California, two years earlier, where Dudley Moore plays an engineer who gets into trouble by failing to give his undivided attention to making Eddie's lemon grow. And, yes, never the twain shall meet. But the poet's point is a poor comic premise. Though Best Defense provides both stars a few funny moments and offers some promising satirical ideas, its binary construction imposes a fatal jumpiness on it. Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck, who co-wrote...

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