Actor's Dream

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

MOON OVER PARADOR

Where there's a will there's a way. Put a choke hold on your desire to be perceived as a tasteful, responsible citizen and you can get laughs out of anything: Hitler (The Producers), sacrilege (Life of Brian) and, yes, Latin American dictatorships (The In-Laws). All you really risk is the outrage of people whose senses of humor screech to a halt when it comes to their most cherished beliefs.

Too bad the sometimes merry and bright director Paul Mazursky flunked this test in Moon over Parador, for he and Co-Writer Leon Capetanos had a nice idea. An actor named Jack Noah (Richard Dreyfuss), who has worked up a party- stunt imitation of the mythical Parador's strongman, is working in that country on the day el Jefe dies of a heart attack. Recruited to replace him by the ruling families, who fear a revolution, Jack finds, as others before him have, that playing President is an actor's dream: all entrances and cheering multitudes.

But Jack is not a Hollywood bubblehead. He is a serious New York thespian, meaning he sometimes thinks before he says his lines. Or anyway he thinks he thinks, which for an actor amounts to the same thing. In this enterprise he is encouraged by his inherited mistress (Sonia Braga) and by his dislike of the spokesman for the protofascist status quo (Raul Julia). The trio are game performers, but their energy cannot compensate for the lack of funny lines and well-constructed scenes. It may be that Mazursky was overcome by a sincerity attack and decided to send an earnest political message. In any event, this is a pale and waning Moon.