Canned Fizz

By F.R.

YOU LIGHT UP MY LIFE Directed by Joseph Brooks Screenplay by Joseph Brooks

Joseph Brooks, the neophyte film maker responsible for this comedy, broke into show biz by scoring a few feature films (The Lords of Flatbush) and winning 21 awards as a Madison Avenue tunesmith. His most famous composition is You've Got a Lot to Live and Pepsi's Got a Lot to Give--a work that seems downright metaphysical when compared with You Light Up My Life, which has crept into the leading ten on Variety's list of top-grossing films.

As its title suggests, You Light Up My Life aspires to be heartwarming entertainment. It tells the story of a young L.A. songwriter-performer (Didi Conn) who escapes the clutches of a grasping stage father (Joe Silver), a doltish fiance (Stephen Nathan) and a lecherous suitor (Michael Zaslow), and goes on to seek fame and fortune in New York. ("I've got to start doing my thing" is the way the heroine defines her goal in life.) Unfortunately, the clutter hides the story. Brooks spends more time shuttling extras in and out of scenes than he does developing his main characters. Only the romantic interludes are unambiguous: when Brooks lets his camera go out of focus, or shows a couple walking along a deserted beach, there's no doubt that love is leaden in the air.

It would be nice to excuse this film's clumsiness as well-intentioned amateurism, but Brooks' intentions are as deplorable as his technique. With the exception of Conn's honestly maudlin performance, every element of You Light Up My Life is cynically conceived; the film's inspirational message and big emotional moments owe more to recent hit movies than they do to any human reality. If Brooks has any genuine passion, it's apparent only when he shamelessly stops his film dead to plug the five ballads he has composed for the sound track. The sentiments in the songs are all canned--but then again so is Pepsi. --F.R.

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