Let's Go to the Feelies

By Richard Corliss/ Lake Buena Vista

( The Walt Disney Co. does not make just "movies" for its theme parks. Puny two-dimensional shadows projected on a flat screen would not do for the entertainment empire built on Uncle Walt's idea for a better mousetrap. At Disneyland in Anaheim, Calif., and at Walt Disney World in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., visitors sit in round theaters and are treated to postcard-panorama film tours of China and France through the technocraft of Circle-Vision 360. The 100 small panels that make up the huge screen in the Energy Pavilion at Disney World's Epcot Center rotate in sync, creating gorgeous sculptured images. Filmed characters interact with spooky holograms and jolly robots. Thus it is with justifiable bluster that Frank Wells, the dapper, track-star-thin boss of Disney's theme lands, describes the company's latest park attraction as "far more than a motion picture. It is a total three-dimensional experience." Rusty Lemorande, the film's producer, calls it "not so much a movie as a 'feelie.' You don't just see it, you feel it, experience it."

The feelie in question is Captain EO, a 17-minute space fantasy with music and dance, which will be shown at the two Disney parks and, as the press kit trumpets, "nowhere else in the universe." But even if it were a dirt-bike movie that played only seedy drive-ins, EO would be notable for the conglomerate of megabuck talent that confected it. The executive producer is George Lucas, creator of the Star Wars trilogy. The director is Francis Ford Coppola, once Lucas' mentor as executive producer of American Graffiti, now switching roles with his former acolyte. The star is Michael Jackson, the pop- music thriller who composed and performs the film's two songs.

Last week's long-awaited "galaxy premiere" of Captain EO was kicked off with typical Disney glitz. Skyrockets and a thousand Mylar balloons crowded the air. A dozen chorus boys and girls in spandex and spangles boogied decorously. Mickey and Minnie Mouse arrived in matching silver-and-rainbow Captain EO garb. The film's opening will also be celebrated in a one-hour NBC special this Saturday. All the hoopla underscored the magnitude of the gamble by Disney and Eastman Kodak, which split the movie's costs. At $20 million or so for the film and its laser effects, Captain EO is, minute for minute, the most expensive movie in history.

The three creators have their own career dreams riding on the film's success. Two years ago Jackson was No. 1 on the hot parade, but his penchant for reclusiveness and prolonged sessions in the recording studio (his new album, delayed several times, is due to be released in January) have dimmed his star power. Coppola has not made a hit film since Apocalypse Now in 1979. Lucas has sponsored a couple of expensive duds this summer (Labyrinth and Howard the Duck) and has seen his hugely profitable Star Wars merchandise inch toward the remainder shelves.

Lucas learned most of what he knows about merchandising from the example of Walt Disney, and Epcot's emporiums are already filled with replicas of such cuddly EO creatures as Hooter (an oboe-nosed elephant), Fuzzball (a scarlet monkey butterfly) and the Geex, Idy and Ody (sort of Siamese-twin Wookies). Nor is the film a reckless investment for Kodak. The previous attraction in the company's Magic Eye Theater, a 3-D film called Magic Journeys, was seen by 19 million people in less than four years. Asked how long EO will run, a Disney spokesman replies, "EOns." Walt Disney and George Eastman might shudder at the expense (not to mention that atrocious pun), but they would appreciate their successors' canny blending of commerce and entertainment.

Ah, but how entertaining is Captain EO? Pretty entertaining, actually. The first half of the film is an energetic rehash of the Star Wars space battle. The second half is an elaborate Michael Jackson video, in which the star emerges from his rickety spaceship to do battle with the Evil Empress, played with magisterial malevolence by Oscar Winner Anjelica Huston (Prizzi's Honor). Jackson, who by now could double for his own Tussaud waxwork, is an improbable Han Solo, but he still dances like a jive Astaire and earned audible swoons from teenage girls at the premiere. The film's 3-D effects are familiar but engineered with flair: an asteroid waits to plop in your lap, Fuzzball hovers adorably over your shoulder, and Huston's tentacle talons virtually shred your shirt.

In one spectacular sequence, a C3PO-style robot is reconstituted into a rock band -- the leg becomes a guitar, the torso a drum set -- and Jackson kicks into high gear with his We Are Here to Change the World, an up-tempo anthem. Laser beams shoot into the theater; orange light splashes off the rear wall. It is quite a workout. Or, as Producer Lemorande notes, "it's a very dense 17 minutes. It's like desserts. They're so small because they're so rich."

But dessert is not very nourishing. Captain EO is sugar but no spice, coating an audio-animatronic gridwork. What can be exhilarating and depressing about Walt Disney World is true of Captain EO: it is a triumph of the artificial, of high-tech wizardry and secondhand emotions. All of which makes EO just fine as a "total three-dimensional experience" but only the fourthbest film at Epcot. In the travelogues of China and France, and in Emil Radok's enthralling documentary about, yes, energy, the imagination is served, not dominated, by the special effects. These films evoke intense feelings for people and ideas. Isn't that what feelies should be all about?