Cinema: Superlatives ALL NIGHT LONG

ALL NIGHT LONG

Directed by Jean-Claude Tramont

Screenplay by W.D. Richter

With Oscar night approaching, the mind begins to swim in superlatives. This new comedy, starring Gene Hackman as a middle-aged man shadowboxing an identity crisis and Barbra Streisand as the kooky love interest, is a film of firsts and worsts, leasts and mosts:

First Streisand film in which she does not receive top billing (Hackman gets it); first American feature directed by the husband of Hollywood’s most powerful agent (Jean-Claude Tramont, spouse to Sue Mengers); first Hollywood movie in ages to end with the legend THE END.

Worst miscasting of Streisand, in a role vacated by Lisa Eichhorn and suitable only for the young Minnie Pearl: worst script by W.D. Richter (Slither, Brubaker); worst-looking meal ever served to a prospective lover (by Streisand to Hackman)—it looks like poured concrete on toast.

Least felicitous use of that hoary double-play literary device, the doppelganger. Hackman plays a man named George Dupler, whose latest invention is a reverse-image mirror.

Most cumbersome ideological baggage for a light comedy: Dupler’s employer is a supermarket chain called UltraSave (U.S., get it?), whose aisles are patrolled by emasculated wimps and homicidal amazons, where the security guard is trigger-happy and a toy helicopter strafes and devastates the store.

Toughest review :

—By Richard Corliss