Puberty Rites

By J.C.

TO FIND A MAN

Directed by BUZZ KULIK Screenplay by ARNOLD SCHULMAN

The ads call it "the story of a boy who got a girl out of trouble," but To Find a Man isn't quite so bad as it sounds. Andy (Darren O'Connor) is a wealthy teen-ager with a high-power IQ. His childhood chum Rosalind (Pamela Martin), who has recently acquired what her mother characterizes as "the worst case of the hots I've ever seen," has got pregnant. She spends a lot of time at her fancy board ing school trying to give herself an abortion. When the usual dormitory methods -- castor oil, Coca-Cola douch es, jumping from high places -- do not work, she turns to Andy.

What keeps all this from being completely sticky is that Rosalind is not a weepy, fragile hysteric but a thoroughly selfish adolescent cow. Andy, studious and shy, willingly undergoes every humiliation for her. After he has managed to arrange a private operation, Rosalind casually asks him if he could change the time so she can get her hair done.

The viewer awaits Andy's awakening to the fact that he is being exploited, and that his own rather tentative manhood is being mocked at every turn. But in the great Hollywood tradition, Scenarist Arnold Schulman opts at the end for those grand old panaceas, universal love and acceptance. "Who am I to judge you?" Andy asks Rosalind. He quotes a little Zen, allows that he loves her, then wanders off, having passed from adolescence to sainthood without even a pause at awareness.

O'Connor is quite touching as Andy, and Pamela Martin's Rosalind is properly vexing. There are also a couple of excellent cameos by Tom Ewell as a corpulent abortionist and Lloyd Bridges, who plays Rosalind's father with a perfect balance of anger, befuddlement and affection. These, in fact, are just the emotions that the movie itself deserves.

. J.C.

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