Short Change

By * J.C.

POCKET MONEY

Directed by STUART ROSENBERG Screenplay by TERRY MALICK

The casual viewer will be able to deduce that this film is a comedy only by sitting through the long pauses between lines, watching the actors play funny-face. Pocket Money is full of an infuriatingly smug cuteness that adds up to drastically short change for the price of a ticket.

Paul Newman and Lee Marvin are rounders scuffling through Mexico, trying to get together a herd of cattle for a rodeo back in the States. While driving down a street in Nogales, they spot a Mexican who has been giving them a good deal of trouble. Newman jumps out of the car, grabs a rock and tosses it far wide of the puzzled Mexican.

"Now the thing is," chortles Marvin as they drive off again, "every time he sees a rock lying in the street he's going to think of you." This is one of the better scenes.

Marvin does manage to carry off a few funny bits, whenever the Mexican heat and the dialogue don't succeed in getting him down. Newman's performance is his worst since The Silver Chalice. A director who was really in control of a picture would never even hire somebody who pulled the kind of stunts Newman gets away with here:

mugging, overplaying, looking endlessly over his shoulder in mock bewilderment. Such things are to be expected from a movie star. But Newman can also be an actor.

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