Throwaway

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

HOOPER

Directed by Hal Needham

Screenplay by Thomas Rickman and Bill Kerby

Hooper is Burt Reynolds' annual Kleenex of a movie--something to use and throw away without much thought beyond a certain gratitude for the convenience of the thing. This time the nation's favorite good ole boy is cast as an aging movie stunt man being challenged for his ascendancy in the profession by a kid (Jan-Michael Vincent). The rough edges of the latter's ambitions, however, are smoothed down by the camaraderie of the stunt-man community, so after some brawling and boozing, he and Reynolds end up collaborating on a car stunt that breaks all records for lunatic derring-do.

It is too bad that this enterprise is so laid-back. There is something fascinating about men who are willing to risk their lives just to give movie audiences a thrill, and it is a shame that the opportunity to get an authentic glimpse of how they live and work and think (both Reynolds and Director Needham come out of this small, closed world) has been frittered away through banal plotting and thin characterization.

On the other hand, this loose style of moviemaking can be agreeable, as the Reynolds-Needham team proved with last year's Smokey and the Bandit. They have a good sense of how people behave on movie sets, of the gags they work out to relieve the odd combination of tension and boredom that typically affects a location. There is also a neat satirical portrait of a pretentious young director whose good grosses on his last picture have convinced him that he is a serious cinematic artist, despite the fact that he is making no more than an action flick. Robert Klein, his round face and soft body contrasting effectively with his demanding egocentricity of manner, gives a fine-tuned comic performance of a boyman. He very nearly steals the show from the lallygaggers and makes the point that if they had all tried as hard as he does, they might have made a really good film instead of a merely likable one.

--Richard Schickel

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