Angst on Sunset Strip

By J.C.

The Christian Licorice Store keeps the audience off balance. It comes on like a fairly conventional, chichi love story, a lot of fancy wrapping around an empty package. But whenever total apathy threatens, a small moment occurs

-- a shot, a gesture, a line of dialogue

-- so well rendered that expectations are revived. They may be frustrated anew in the next scene, but even at its worst The Christian Licorice Store always manages to be interesting.

The plot is an offhand affair about a hot-shot California tennis player (Beau Bridges) afflicted with the same psychogenic pestilence that has raged through so many other contemporary movies (Five Easy Pieces, Two-Lane Blacktop). The tennis player has a smashing girl friend (Maud Adams), who turns him on but threatens to tie him down. His career is lucrative but unfulfilling. Even when his beloved coach and manager (Gilbert Roland) dies, he is incapable of feeling much more than self-pity. So with characteristic cool, he embarks on a course of suicide.

The movie is a patchwork of pop culture -- its title derived from a Tim Buckley tune, its sound track laden with song fragments and snippets of news broadcasts, its pastel photography reminiscent of countless TV commercials. Monte Hellman, director of Two-Lane Blacktop, even appears in a cameo role. All this does not amount to much more than another episode of Sunset Strip angst, but there are reassuring indications throughout that Director James Frawley and Scenarist Floyd Mutrux are capable of better work.

Roland's death is especially effective. The camera finds him lying in bed, pans over to pick up his clock radio switching on, continues slowly round the room, showing dozens of framed pictures that range over his past, then comes to rest again on him. He has not moved. The radio continues to play.

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