Smooth Sailing

By JAY COCKS

LUCKY LADY

Directed by STANLEY DONEN

Screenplay by WILLARD HUYCK and GLORIA KATZ

For the past year or so, the rallying cry for most American film producers has been "entertainment." Hollywood is interested almost entirely in showing audiences a good time, recycling traditional plots and characters, concentrating on star quality. What is most eagerly sought after is the glistening surface and full-throttle frivolity that characterized Hollywood films of the 1930s.

Luxurious, sassy and a lot of fun, Lucky Lady is very much a movie of the times--both now and then. It is a wisecracking, softhearted romantic adventure in which the major characters seem modeled on movie stars. With the shade of Jean Harlow peering over her cocked shoulder, Liza Minnelli plays a '20s rumrunner called Claire Dobie. Gene Hackman and Burt Reynolds, her partners in crime, are like Tracy and Gable, fast friends and occasional antagonists, both in love with Claire. These three amorous buddies run booze up the California coast from Mexico, playing cat-and-mouse with the Coast Guard and doing battle with the Mob boys who frown on independent action. They get rich and get shot at, sometimes all at once. This splendidly impossible sort of life is precarious and, as a consequence, exhilarating.

Sly Wit. The rambunctious sophistication of Stanley Donen's direction makes the amatory adventures whistle by as fast as the gunplay. Writers Huyck and Katz, who collaborated with George Lucas on the screenplay for American Graffiti, are unashamedly infatuated with the myths and romances of old Hollywood but are shrewd enough not to mimic them. Their writing is affectionate, not slavish, and is full of sly wit.

The three principals seem to realize their importance in maintaining the proper chemical balance. Liza Minnelli is better than she has ever been, sweet and raffish, while Burt Reynolds cuts up with infectious bemusement. Much of the heavy acting falls to Gene Hackman--just as it did to Spencer Tracy--and he performs with subdued authority. If the stars seem sometimes to be off on different courses, playing out their own roles instead of playing to each other, this is one of the hazards of all-star Hollywood entertainment.

For all its breeziness, Lucky Lady falters over a few other hazards. The proceedings get a little arch at tunes: an occasional line seems too cherished, some secondary performances are rendered in strokes too broad. Besides, at the last minute the film makers changed the original ending, in which Hackman and Reynolds were killed, because preview audiences were disappointed. Now the three protagonists are last seen much older and still together. The happy ending is in one of Hollywood's best traditions. Those traditions can be limiting even when the show is flush with high spirits.

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