Tear Jerks

By Frank Rich

THE CHAMP

Directed by Franco Zeffirelli

Screenplay by Walter Newman

If you are looking for a good cry, The Champ might seem a likely bet to deliver the goods. This movie has every tear-jerking device known to Hollywood, and then some. Its central characters are an adorable eight-year-old boy and his loving dad, a has-been boxer. The action is pure hokum. Will Dad throw off his addictions to gambling and booze and make a comeback in the ring? Will Dad's exwife, now a remarried society lady, try to regain custody of the son she once abandoned? Will Dad and Mom fall in love again? Will the son's pet horse win the race at Hialeah? The heart boggles.

Or so it should. When the great director King Vidor made The Champ in 1931, he created a four-handkerchief corker; a fine cast (Wallace Beery, the young Jackie Cooper, Irene Rich) and Vidor's emotional restraint prevented a sugary story from caramelizing. This remake, directed by Franco Zeffirelli (Romeo and Juliet), is another matter entirely. By miscasting all three major roles, adding 35 minutes to the original film's running time and reaching for cheap effects, the director has gilded a lily and then shredded it.

Although Zeffirelli usually has a good eye for sets and atmosphere, even the ambience of The Champ seems bogus. The low-life Florida sporting hangouts frequented by the champ (Jon Voight) and his son (Ricky Schroder) are a tad too pretty; the extras look like a musical comedy chorus. The florid digs of the mother (Faye Dunaway) are so opulent that one expects Astaire and Rogers to appear on a staircase. Such decorative exaggeration is paralleled by Zeffirelli's treatment of his story. Each time The Champ hits a melodramatic climax, which is roughly once every five minutes, the director brings up soppy music and goes for the jugular. When the champ, in despair, discards a Teddy bear he had planned to give his son, Zeffirelli actually cuts to a closeup of the abandoned toy.

Voight's performance is a disappointment after his realistic portrayal of a Viet Nam vet in Coming Home. The champ should be a sweet, dumb lug, but Voight comes off as an actor playing a sweet, dumb lug. He affects a Sylvester Stallone accent, clouds his face with introspective pain and is not for a second convincing.

He is thinking too hard, and so is Dunaway. This actress's repertoire of neurotic mannerisms brings back unwanted memories of her performance in Chinatown, even to the point of imbuing The Champ with bizarre incestuous undercurrents. As the young object of Dunaway's affections, the freckle-faced Schroder cries on any and every cue. Tears flood the screen, but at theaters where this Champ is playing, there won't be a wet eye in the house. --Frank Rich

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