The Big Score

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

IF EVER I SEE YOU AGAIN Directed by Joe Brooks Screenplay by Joe Brooks and Martin Davidson

Usually, a score is written to accompany a movie. The peculiar genius of Joe Brooks lies in his discovery that a movie can be made to accompany the score. He had an enormous, ill-deserved success doing that last year with You Light Up My Life, and now he seems determined to pursue us through another summer with more of the same.

This time the story is about a formerly married jingles composer who gets to thinking about his lost college love, coincidentally discovers her whereabouts, wins her briefly, loses her, then wins her for good at the last freeze frame. But the formula remains the same: earnestness, good nature and sophomoric romanticism substituted for wit, intelligence and style, with Brooks' music smeared over everything, like gooey frosting. The picture is shot in the manner of the TV commercials Brooks used to do, and his people display all the nuances we've come to expect from citizens who really care about the shine on their kitchen floors.

Brooks is the kind of man who likes to have himself described in press releases as "multitalented." But if his songs sometimes ascend to the banal, he has yet to prove that he can write or direct at all. Dialogue often sounds improvised, and major emotional scenes are sometimes covered entirely by music. When they are not, they lack dynamics and tension. Now he has added lead acting to his repertory of skills, but it is strictly of the smile-and-shamble school. Probably his description should be "multiambitious."

Still, one has to admire his chutzpah. He has hired pretty Shelley Hack (the Charlie girl of the perfume ads) and then hidden her fine face behind a huge pair of glasses. He has added Writers Jimmy Breslin and George Plimpton to the cast for curiosity value. He has even had the nerve to stage his big reconciliation scene on Christmas morning, heaping sentiment on sentiment. It may work.

There is such a hunger for romance, for decent emotions, that people will probably go to see this film despite its vulgar ineptitude. But it is a shame that the romantic spirit should, these days, be the first refuge for the charlatan, the last for honest craftsmen.

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