Making Mr. Right

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

The moral of this tale could not be simpler or, in its way, more disappointingly obvious. It holds that the American male has declined to such a sorry -- if occasionally hilarious -- state of ineptitude that the American female's last best hope for happy mating lies in robotics. Every man that Frankie Stone (Ann Magnuson) and her friends and family encounter is in one way or another so insecure and self-absorbed as to be incapable of sustaining a decent relationship with a woman. It is only when Frankie, a public relations expert, takes an assignment for a manufacturer of high-tech doodads for the space program that she finds advanced science has fabricated what decades of psychological counseling and years of feminist lecturing have not been able to create: an android who is sensitive, caring and sexually satisfying in a way that natural men cannot manage.

The relationship that develops between Frankie and Ulysses, her robot dreamboat, is pleasant but conventionally screwball. This seems rather dismaying, considering that Director Seidelman showed such a fresh eye and so much wayward comic originality in 1985's Desperately Seeking Susan.

But wait. Seidelman has had the wit to cast that uncannily resourceful actor John Malkovich as both Jeff Peters, the mad -- well, anyway, crabby -- scientist who created Ulysses, and the mechanical marvel himself. The former is a ferocious misanthrope, misogynist and klutz; the latter is, naturally and logically, everything his master cannot hope to be. He moves, for example, not with the herky-jerky nervousness of his creator or a too cute movie robot. Instead, Malkovich invests him with a preternatural smoothness. His character is equally subtle. It may be based on the wise-child conventions on which the typical sci-fi robot is modeled. But Malkovich informs and energizes his performance with the deadpan bravery, the relentless will, the invincible ignorance and the infinite need to give and receive love that all parents observe as their offspring pass through the infamously terrible twos.

The gambit is brilliant, for surely a robot would feel exactly what a human two-year-old feels as he sets forth on the exploration of his strange newfound world. Malkovich gives a wonderful performance where we do not expect one, and it makes the rest of the film problematic. On one hand, it grants the picture a distinction it would not otherwise enjoy. On the other hand, it is a continual reminder of just how routine the rest of the movie is. In effect, his performance, together with Seidelman's former success, creates an expectation of sustained comic brilliance that this genre piece cannot finally deliver. Still, Malkovich is something to see. And the engaging Ulysses is a character who may prove difficult to forget.