Slow Ride

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

ROLLERCOASTER

Directed by JAMES GOLDSTONE Screenplay by RICHARD LEVINSON and WILLIAM LINK

Rollercoaster is the latest--and so far least--excuse to trot out Sensurround, that technology that is still in search of a character and, for that matter, a plot worthy of its woofers.

This time we have George Segal as a safety inspector convinced that foul play was involved in the spectacular amusement-park accident with which the picture promisingly begins. The audience, one step ahead of him as it always is in this movie, knows that sweet-faced youth (Timothy Bottoms) lurking around the wide screen has got more on his mind than cotton candy. He is a highly intelligent psychopath who gets at least as much fun out of making the cops look like fools as he does out of making thrill rides even more thrilling than they were intended to be. It is only a matter of time--too much time, as things turn out--before he is apprehended.

Writers Levinson and Link develop a few pleasant comedy bits involving Segal's status as a divorced father who is trying hard to control his cigarette habit but not hard enough to control his fast lip. They also devise a nice, slow-motion chase between Segal and Bottoms in one of the amusement parks where the film was shot. This material is at least mildly amusing, and affords excuses for Old Pros Henry Fonda and Richard Widmark to come on irascible.

The trouble is that the writers could not talk anybody into letting them blow up another roller coaster, or even seriously threaten one, for the climax. So the movie just sort of peters out as everybody chases about at Los Angeles' Magic Mountain park. Couldn't hero and villain at least have wrestled around up there atop the scary Magic Mountain coaster? Why did they bring Segal's daughter near the ride if they were not going to put her on it and thus into thrilling jeopardy?

There is something chickenhearted about this backing away from the sort of big finish that pictures like this implicitly promise. One cannot help thinking that the producers were afraid of making drama too strong for the family audiences that PG ratings pull in. The result, however, is a film of small appeal to any audience .

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