RECESS YET?

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

Movie stars who will do anything for love! And the audiences that encourage them! Next on Ricki Lake? No, right now at the Stygian Acres multiplex.

But not, one imagines, for very long. Much as we all enjoy a sloppy wallow in cheap sentiment, it is hard to imagine anyone wanting to watch Robin Williams further degrade in Jack what was one of the movies' most valuable gifts. The film is a Big variant--a kid inhabiting a grownup's body and getting into all sorts of trouble as a result. But we're not talking about an ill-considered wish going merrily awry here. We're talking about a tragic illness. For Jack doesn't just get older and hairier, he keeps aging at four times the normal rate. This means, of course, that he is something like 70 years old by the time he graduates from high school--and will probably be dead by the time his classmates hit grad school.

This is not, putting it mildly, a fun premise. Indeed, the screenwriters (James DeMonaco and Gary Nadeau) and the director (Francis Ford Coppola, no less) consider it to be a philosophical premise, an occasion to wax pseudo-wise about life's brevity and the need to live it to the fullest while we're still here. There are also several demonstrations of why it is not nice to make fun of people who are different from us.

Disgusting food- and flatulence-related humor do not much lighten this load. Neither do jokes about sexual misunderstanding. One is left wondering why Williams has granted early retirement to his inner anarchist, what dark need compels a great clown to become a sad, fuzzy one in movies only Bob Dole--faking it--could love.

--By Richard Schickel