Dim Homage to a Comic Master

By Frank Rich

THE WORLD'S GREATEST LOVER Directed by Gene Wilder

Screenplay by Gene Wilder

Gene Wilder should be perfectly content to be Gene Wilder, but he persists in trying to be Mel Brooks. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother, Wilder's first film as a director-writer-star, was a pale Brooks pastiche, and The World's Greatest Lover is more of the same. This is sad, for Wilder does have a fresh sensibility of his own to offer: here and there in his films one can find a sweet romantic streak and the beginnings of a surreal visual style. But Wilder refuses to trust his own instincts. Every time his movies start to travel down an original path, he pulls back and pays dim homage to Blazing Saddles.

The results are excruciatingly flat. Wilder has little talent for imitating Brooks' mad comic style, no matter how diligently he tries. Though his films have not yet descended to the puerile level of Marty Feldman's recent Brooks knockoff, The Last Remake of Beau Geste, they contain no big laughs. In place of honest humor, Wilder provides the illusion of knockabout comedy--frantically busy scenes and lots of noise. Only Saturday-morning TV addicts could possibly endure the antics of The World's Greatest Lover, in which characters are forever shouting their lines, bulging their eyes and stumbling through pratfalls.

Like all the Brooks-Wilder-Feldman efforts, this one is about old movies. Wilder plays Rudy Valentine, a shnook from Milwaukee who goes West when a film company announces a search for a new star to compete with Valentino. Once the hero hits Hollywood, predictable gags ensue at an alarming rate. There are the usual send-ups of silent movies and film-company yes men, not to mention the now obligatory asides about Valentino's ambiguous sexuality. Rather than recapture the high spirits of Brooks' Silent Movie, this movie more often looks like an overbudgeted tribute to the Three Stooges.

In addition to Wilder, the other principal stooges are Dom DeLuise and Carol Kane. Since they both copy the star's own hysterical acting style, they fade quickly into the chaotic background. Wilder's performance is just a broader version of the routine he invented a decade ago in The Producers. His one big scene with Richard Pryor in the otherwise feckless Silver Streak is funnier than all 90 minutes of his mugging here.

As a director, Wilder fares somewhat better. The film looks handsome, and its few reflective scenes express an idiosyncratic affection for the mythos of American movies. The shots of Hollywood sound stages and Beverly Hills vistas have a Fellini-esque quality, as does a dreamy sequence in which the film's two Rudys spend an unlikely afternoon together. Better yet, The World's Greatest Lover ends with a rush of feeling for both movies and people that is surprisingly touching. While the climax has nothing to do with the film that precedes it, one can at least hope that it is a harbinger of ruly personal Gene Wilder films yet to come.

Frank Rich

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