CINEMA

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

THE MARRYING MAN Directed by Jerry Rees; Screenplay by Neil Simon

Yelling. Sulking. Wall punching. Dangerous objects flying through the air. And, of course, one of the stars threatening to take a few days off in Brazil. Seems she had an urgent need to consult with her psychic. The near unmaking of The Marrying Man and the on-set tiffing between its lead actors, Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger, made a much read and sermonized-over feature in Premiere magazine. See what happens, said Hollywood, when you give stars too much power as well as too much money.

Oh, well, you know the old show-biz saying: Bad rehearsal, good show. Or, in this case, pretty good show. Like a lot of us who came of age in the late '40s and early '50s, Neil Simon obviously based his youthful fantasies about the glamorous life on newspaper reports of "playboys" (such a quaint word), who when they weren't racing fast cars spent their idle lives in pursuit of fast women. The script has about it a nice, sweet-dreaming quality, and animation director Jerry Rees, working for the first time on a feature, has invested The Marrying Man with a very pleasant innocence of spirit.

That is not as easy as it sounds. The lead lounge lizard, toothpaste heir Charley Pearl (Baldwin), is engaged and attending a Las Vegas bachelor party when he falls into obsession with nightclub singer Vicki Anderson (Basinger). She, in turn, is the mistress of the Strip's founding mobster, Bugsy Siegel. In other words, these are not people with whom one feels an immediate natural identification. Nor is their problem -- a stormy relationship that requires them to marry and separate four times -- one for which most people are likely to have an affinity.

About all that can be said for Charley is that his reluctance to marry a spoiled-rotten fiance (Elisabeth Shue) and take on a classically choleric movie mogul (Robert Loggia) in the bargain is understandable. About all that can be said about Vicki is that she is pretty and sings sexily.

It is the sleight-of-hand plot, which requires the pair to keep marrying and separating, that redeems the picture. The film is so quick and busy that most of the time one forgets they are essentially no-accounts, not entirely bright or likable. Indeed, Simon's admission that they are based on historical models -- shoe magnate Harry Karl and starlet Marie ("the Body") McDonald, whose misadventures in multiple marriage titillated tabloid readers four decades ago -- renders the jolliness of his writing, and Rees' direction, all the more astonishing. They were, perhaps, a very odd couple, but not necessarily a fun couple.

Charley is surrounded by some funny best friends, led by comedian Paul Reiser, who keeps the one-liners bouncing. And Baldwin plays dumb and earnest in an engaging way. Basinger is something of a problem. She is a very self- absorbed actress who gives the impression of a woman trying to get in on a joke she does not quite understand. Watching her reminds one wistfully of tart, smart Michelle Pfeiffer in The Fabulous Baker Boys. But you can't have everything, and considering the difficulties of its creation, The Marrying Man is something: a comedy that bounces skittishly down a lane that memory has not traveled in a while. Maybe it's silly. But it does awaken a nostalgic fondness for an era when celebrity dreaming was goofier, giddier and less consequential than it is now.