China Seizure Shanghai Surprise

By RICHARD CORLISS

Right now she is the world's most popular chanteuse. Her album True Blue quickly went triple platinum; her Papa Don't Preach single did time at No. 1. In her new movie she co-stars with Husband Sean Penn, that terrific actor and legendary cutup. Last winter, when the newlyweds made the film, they also made headlines on every tabloid front page. There would seem to be a bit of "want see" here. And yet MGM, the distributor of Shanghai Surprise, has drop-kicked it into the marketplace like a turkey carcass.

Hard to see why. The film is no winner but no atrocity either. We are in Shanghai, 1938. Warlords and China dolls are bumping into faded carbon copies of Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre. That must make Penn the Bogart figure -- a hustler and self-styled "Glow-in-the-Dark-Tie King" who helps a prim but spunky missionary (yep, Madonna) find 1,000 lbs. of opium to help soothe the wounds of Chinese soldiers. "Guns cause pain," she says fervently. "Opium eases pain."

Like another doomed (and much more enjoyable) summer movie, Prince's Under the Cherry Moon, this one attempts to fit a very modern one-name pop superstar into a traditional, golden-age Hollywood format. And why not? Who else has that old-time charisma? Only the bad boy and material girl of rock 'n' roll. With Prince it worked, mostly, because his blend of Little Richard and Little Egypt spiced the stew. But Madonna seems straitjacketed by her role, and Penn, for once, looks bored. She smiles, he glowers. Neither glows like the incandescent movie stars they can and will be. R.C.