Dippy Harry

By John Skow

PINK CADILLAC Directed by Buddy Van Horn; Written by John Eskow

Under the right circumstances -- temperature in three digits, air conditioner broken, the tube showing tractor-pull-contest reruns, the dog under the bed with an attack of chiggers, marriage teetering, car defunct with black-lung disease and only one movie within walking distance -- Pink Cadillac is a tolerable summer-weight flick. Clint Eastwood and Bernadette Peters have a somewhat better time than the viewer, but they probably do in real life too.

Eastwood plays a fun-loving hard guy who captures fugitives who have skipped out on their bail money; cons a villain into believing he has won a date with Dolly Parton, then shows up in a limousine and arrests him; dresses up as a rodeo clown and nabs a bad-guy bull rider on first bounce, just as the bull has tossed him. Peters plays -- but you knew this, didn't you? -- a gorgeous, daffy bail jumper. She isn't really a villain, of course. Her dopey husband is involved with a crew of gun-fondling white supremacists, and they need to hide $250,000 in counterfeit bills, which he stows under the folded-up top of his pink 1959 Cadillac convertible.

That leads to a lovely shot of dingbat Peters wheeling down a dirt road, radio blasting, with funny money blowing out of the back of the car. She has one foot on the dashboard, and bubble-gum bubbles are popping out of her funny little rosebud mouth, right there in the middle of her funny big custard-pie face.

That's pretty much the movie. Peters is cute and irresistible, Eastwood is cute and irresistible, and then the two of them, like ballet dancers, are cute together. Peters' character has a baby, who is cute too, but the kid still has a lot to learn. Everyone plays off stereotypes of stereotypes, so Peters does a send-up of Eastwood's middle-aged machismo, and Eastwood, eyelids fluttering prettily in that fine Mount Rushmore face, takes off Peters' little-girl-lost act. Eastwood wins.

These two, in fact, are surprisingly funny, and they belong in a movie with a real plot; say, one on the level of The Cannonball Run. Here the white supremacists snarl and shoot off a lot of George Bush firearms, but the only dramatic tension comes from worrying about that lovely Cadillac. They wouldn't really hurt it, would they? Don't bet on it.