You're Under Arrest!

By RICHARD CORLISS

What movie extravaganza has a cast of 2,000, including Warren Beatty, Bill Cosby, Bette Midler, Robin Williams, Walter Cronkite, Chevy Chase, Martin Short, David Letterman, Mel Gibson, Pee-wee Herman and George Lucas? Features an earthquake, a shipwreck, a giant bee, several gunfights and a zillion other acts of harmless mayhem? Cost about $500 million to produce -- as much as ten whole Ishtars? And, with gobs of charm, sly wit and relentless good cheer, brings off the film magician's trick of making make-believe believable?

Answer: the Disney-MGM Studios Theme Park, a 135-acre spectacular in the 44- sq.-mi. Walt Disney World near Orlando. With a lavishness the Sultan of Brunei might envy, Disney threw itself a premiere party last weekend and invited a few friends: Audrey Hepburn, George Burns, Willie Nelson, Kevin Costner, the Pointer Sisters, "Buffalo" Bob Smith and 6,000 journalists. The do, trumpeted in by an NBC special, was Disney's way of telling Hollywood, "Hey, guys, the magic is back. And we brought it. To Florida."

Disney-MGM is the costume jewel, the golden Mousketeer cap on the head of chairman Michael Eisner. Five years ago, Disney was an ailing movie midget coasting on revenue from its theme parks in Florida, Japan and Anaheim, Calif. Now it reigns as box-office champ. It also produces hit series like Golden Girls, boasts 9,000 rooms in its Florida hotels and plans to open Euro Disneyland outside Paris in 1992. And still Eisner eyes more robust expansion. Typhoon Lagoon, a 50-acre water theme park, premieres next month, followed shortly by a PG-rated night-life district called Pleasure Island and three more hotels with an additional 4,500 rooms. Disney-MGM Studios (the company purchased rights to use MGM films in its attractions) is also a functioning movie studio, where both Disney's and rivals' films are made.

There is one rival that doesn't shoot there, though it might want to shoot at it. For a quarter-century, Universal Studios has considered erecting a studio park in Florida to complement its Southern California facility.

But for now, Universal's Florida movieland is just a script. Disney's is a tangible fantasy -- real tinsel draped artfully over Hollywood's phony tinsel, an art industry glammed up as an elegant Deco dream. There is a sanitizing genius to the Disney parks, with their canny nostalgia for an America that may have existed only in the lace-valentine heart of a young Walt Disney. And the tactic works best when applying a cartoonist's paintbrush to a world that is fiction, on- and offscreen. Disney-MGM Studios marries movies to theme parks with the astuteness of Hollywood's hottest studio and the spell of a professional dream weaver. Here the men are strong and the women beautiful; the moral choices are in glorious black and white; and the ending is always happy.

The fantasy begins as you enter the gate and step onto Hollywood Boulevard. No teen hookers or creepy vibes here. That's just reality. On Disney-MGM's main street, the billboard proclaims HOLLYWOODLAND, BEDROOM COMMUNITY OF THE INNOCENT PAST. The corner gas station dispenses "service with a smile," and Mickey's of Hollywood peddles nothing racier than T shirts with a mouse emblem. Even the local sanitation man (one of many character types crowding the street like Preston Sturges comedy characters) has refined tastes. "I collect only the garbage of the stars," he proclaims with delicious snoot. Hollywaste. Tinsel trash.

Genuine celebs will mingle with the fans of Hollywood Boulevard each day (Cyd Charisse this week). But the basic idea of Disney-MGM is that the visitor is the star. Bobby-soxed employees clamor for your autograph, demand to be photographed with your family of four (who have paid about $110 for a day at the park). In the SuperStar Television show, you guest-star in ingeniously integrated scenes from I Love Lucy, Today, The Ed Sullivan Show or General Hospital. On the 90-min. Studio Tour you don a yellow slicker and become skipper of the good ship Miss Fortune, buffeted by wind and water. As a "Foley artist" in the Monster Sound Show, you desperately improvise sound effects to accompany a comedy thriller, then dub your voice to match the moving lips of Clark Gable or Jean Harlow -- and listen in giddy horror to the results. Sit in a formica booth at the Prime Time Cafe, a gorgeous riot of '50s kitsch, and waitresses dressed like early TV moms dote on you as if you were Wally and the Beaver.

Disney wants you to discover the intricate craft of moviemaking without losing the moviegoer's fond suspension of disbelief. In its most elaborate attraction, The Great Movie Ride, spectators enter a reproduction of Hollywood's secular cathedral, the Chinese theater, where the Casablanca piano and Dorothy's ruby slippers repose under glass. Computerized mannequins portray such stars as James Cagney, Clint Eastwood and Harrison Ford. An Alien monster lurches and drools. For all its bustle, the ride refuses to enthrall. Even a beguiling stop in Munchkinland reminds the passengers that, however the technology of Disney rides has improved, the scope has not changed since the '60s. It's a Small World after all.

As the Backstage Studio Tour tram passes one movie set, a propman waves jerkily, keying the tour's theme: high tech meets low comedy. A guide points to a sound stage where new Mouseketeers are taping a show: "They do their own stunts, and they do them without Annette." On monitors, TV's Huxtable clan explains how a sitcom is shot, while patriarch Cosby dresses up in various sports uniforms and shouts, "I'm goin' to Disney World!" Beatty explains set design, Lucas and two mechanical friends discuss post-production, Gibson and Herman demonstrate sound editing, Midler stars in a short comedy with lots of sets and stunts. At the end, Eisner and Mickey Mouse invite the audience to watch previews of Disney summer films. Eisner wears a Mickey Mouse watch. Mickey wears a Michael Eisner watch. Everything moves like clockwork.

"Complete control is what makes the back lot so perfect," says a guide on the studio tour. She might be speaking of Disney-MGM and Walt Disney World too, where the disturbances are likely to be no more surprising than a tantrum at a six-year-old's birthday party. In one sense, Disney World is a dictatorship with heart: it gives the illusion of perfect freedom in a land of artful order. But illusion, after all, is the name of the movie game, and no one plays it as well or on so grand a scale as Disney.

Sometimes, when artists and artisans collide, the illusion plays like magic. Disney began as a cartoon studio, and it is in the Animation pavilion that the park hits its peak. Walter Cronkite narrates a how-to movie, a new gloss on Peter Pan starring Robin Williams, never more brilliantly madcap than here as a misplaced pixie squaring off against Captain Hook. Disney animators, their sweet faces glowing with untapped star quality, describe the joys of creating cartoon characters. A six-minute suite of Disney animation caps the experience: emotional transport without a tram. And if you want a cartoon dream to come true, Williams is the star to wish upon.

As one family last week strolled down Hollywood Boulevard toward the exit, a Disney policeman stopped them and wrote out a summons because they pleaded guilty to "having too much fun." Hey, everybody at Disney-MGM Studios Theme Park -- you're under arrest!