A Pop Star Crosses Over

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

TITLE: THE BODYGUARD

DIRECTOR: MICK JACKSON

WRITER: LAWRENCE KASDAN

THE BOTTOM LINE: The suspense is mild, the sexual heat is low, but Whitney Houston's screen debut has its charms.

She is an insolent kitten, a whimsical promise of claws and cuddles. He is a Doberman in a nondescript suit, a deadly compound of wariness and instant reactions. Less fancifully, she's Rachel Marron (Whitney Houston, playing what she is, a pop diva crossing over to the movies, though it's unlikely that she will be up for an Oscar the first time out, as is the fictional Rachel). He's Frank Farmer (Kevin Costner), reluctantly signed on to provide security for her after death threats have been received.

It is a nice mismatching of characters, the kind that movies have always wanted us to believe leads inevitably to love. It's a nice mismatching of star images too -- Ms. Sinuosity and Mr. Straight Arrow. And it works pretty well. Lawrence Kasdan's script gives Rachel a messy life: the band rehearsing in her living room, members of her entourage wandering in and out, a son lonesome and looking for a father figure. In contrast, Frank has no life at all: an underfurnished tract house with the mail piling up at the front door, no visible friends or light-minded interests. We know, before they do, that this man and this woman were made for each other.

But the situation is not particularly well developed. The question of who may be stalking the celebrity is not posed in a riveting fashion, and the two or three menacing sequences are isolated passages, not integrated into a steadily tightening web of suspense. Director Mick Jackson is good with show- biz hubbub, but the good idea of having the killer make his move at the Academy Awards ceremony is vitiated by the sequence's cramped, tacky design.

Nor do Houston and the ever tactful Costner generate much sexual heat. But the shy, tentative quality of their relationship is appealing, and the sense she projects of a woman befuddled by sudden stardom has authentic sweetness. You can't say Houston storms the screen, but she is winsome and vulnerable -- a lady taking a first step on what may turn out to be a well-paced long run.