Weekend Entertainment Guide

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MOVIES . . . THE MIRROR HAS TWO FACES: Two Columbia professors, Gregory Larkin (Jeff Bridges) and Rose Morgan (Barbra Streisand), are caught in the grip of a really dumb idea. He thinks all his problems derive from his inability to stay out of the beds of sexually desirable but otherwise destructive women. He decides instead to form a companionate liaison with a woman who is his mental equal, but is otherwise -- how to put this gently? -- a bowwow. Rose, we are to understand, is so desperate that she goes along with him, thinking that once they're married, his resistance to her will break down. "Richard LaGravenese is one of the few screenwriters left who can write smart dialogue for grownups to speak, but that skill only occasionally distracts from the desperation of his basic conceit," notes TIME's Richard Schickel. "Bridges is a terrific actor, but, putting it mildly, he's miscast in the Doris Day role. And Streisand is a terrific presence, but also a performer who never forgets who she really is. Second Hand Roses have been part of her act, part of her calculations, for over 30 years, during which time we have learned that sooner or later the guy is going to respond to her inner light." This glow is only half hidden under her shapeless clothes, half disguised by her boisterous enthusiasm for baseball, half explained by her relationship with an ego-flattening mom (Lauren Bacall, dripping comic venom in award-winning doses). "In short," notes Schickel, "the fine feathers of a star we all know to be a strong, smart and sexy woman keep peeking through her ugly-duckling getup."