Rushes

THE LONELY GUY

The idea of mating sitcom material with a surrealist style seems, at first glance, to have about as much promise of permanent delight as a pickup in a singles bar. And by the end of The Lonely Guy, even the film's best friends may feel that some aesthetic counseling is in order. Yet for a movie that once again takes up a matter made achingly familiar by contemporary song and story -- the hardships and confusions of the single life -- it offers some curiously arresting visions: the rooftops of New York City crowded with men howling the names of women whose unlisted phone numbers they have lost; the air around the Manhattan Bridge filled with the falling bodies of suicidal lovers; a service that rents cardboard cutouts of celebrities to fill up the room when a hopeless bachelor tries to give a party. A pity Director Arthur Hiller could not sustain such a high level of lunacy throughout this adaptation of Bruce Jay Friedman's pop-classic meditation on how urban realities undermine our urbane fantasies. If he had, unlikely adjectives like Felliniesque might now be accreting to The Lonely Guy. But half the film is merely joky in a flat, familiar way, and Steve Martin in the title role and Charles Grodin as his best friend too consistently play in the depressed-repressed mode. There needs to be some open frenzy in their madness. Still, there is more off-the-wall originality in the film than audiences can find in a dozen typical commercial comedies. It is a one-night stand one might actually remember in years to come.

CRACKERS

In the 18th century it was considered chic to spend an evening at the local lunatic asylum, laughing at the inmates. In the 20th century you can be asked to leave a dinner party for making a joke about the mentally disturbed or deficient. Perhaps the kindest thing to be said about our century is that it has managed to make this modest improvement in manners. Perhaps the kindest way to describe Crackers is to say that it is informed by the older sensibility. Louis Malle's remake of the unfunny 1958 Italian comedy Big Deal on Madonna Street has gained nothing in translation to contemporary San Francisco, where a dismal group of losers ineptly attempt to rob the safe of a pawnbroker who is, grumpily, the only friend they have.

Neither touching nor humorous in their dimness, they can engender only one emotion: disgust. Donald Sutherland, Jack Warden and Wallace Shawn are among those trying to find some overtone or undertone they can resonate to, but the script is so dull and the direction so lacking in dynamics that they are reduced to aimless noodling. The depression they feel in their bereft state will quickly communicate itself to any viewer.