Cross Talk

By Frank Rich

JUST TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT

Directed by Sidney Lumet

Screenplay by Jay Presson Allen

The opening scene may not be original, but it certainly is promising. A very chic heroine (Ali MacGraw) follows a well-dressed man (Alan King) into Bergdorf Goodman and proceeds to slug him repeatedly with her purse. All hell breaks loose in the department store, and it seems that Director Sidney Lumet will transport his audience back to the glory days of Hollywood's glossy romantic comedies. Maybe MacGraw and King are no Lombard and Gable--or Day and Hudson--but at least they seem intent on having a good time. Just Tell Me What You Want looks as if it were home free.

Unfortunately it is not. After a brisk 20 minutes, the movie loses its assurance and sense of purpose. Indeed, Jay Presson Allen's screenplay reels around like a drunken sailor. From moment to moment, Just Tell Me is a somber and confusingly plotted story of corporate power struggles, a syrupy account of a love triangle, and a sloppy satire of show business--rather like Lumet's Network. There are still some bright moments, but they are separated by flaccid, poorly connected scenes that go nowhere at great length.

The few high points belong to King and MacGraw. He is Max, a fast-dealing, fast-talking zillionaire with a penchant for keeping women in overdecorated Manhattan pads. She is "Bones," a TV producer and longtime protegee who revolts against Max by making careerist demands and carrying on with an off-off-Broadway playwright (Peter Weller). King is too much of a pussycat to convey the hero's toughness, but he delivers Allen's best sallies with crackling speed ("I'll tell you who lives in New Jersey! Cousins live in New Jersey!"). Though MacGraw is no comedian, she is animated and playful for the first time in memory.

The other roles are well cast, but only Tony Roberts' gay Hollywood magnate is clearly drawn. Dina Merrill, while quite nutty as Max's institutionalized wife, is left stranded between farce and tragedy. The playwright is inconsistently written as both a pretentious aesthete and an idealized heartthrob; finally his plot strand peters out, and poor Weller disappears without explanation. By then, Allen and Lumet have forsaken both laughter and romance for some muddy philosophizing: Hollywood deal making, it abruptly turns out, is a metaphor for male-female relationships. Maybe so, but it is hard to believe that the creators of Just Tell Me What You Want ever told each other just what movie they wanted to make. --Frank Rich

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