Cold Tub

By Frank Rich

SERIAL Directed by Bill Persky Screenplay by Rich Eustis and Michael Elias

Cyra McFadden's comic bestseller, The Serial, was as much journalism as satire. In order to devastate her prey, the trendy, upper-middle-class denizens of Marin County, Calif., McFadden did not resort to barbed wisecracks: she merely let her characters speak for themselves. Like Director-Writer Paul Mazursky in Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, she understood that the affluent, desperate hipsters of the Far West are their own worst enemies. There is no point in making fun of people who are already self-parodies.

It is too bad that Mazursky did not buy the movie rights to McFadden's book. Instead, they went to Sidney Beckerman, a producer whose credits include the legendary film desecration of Portnoy's Complaint. Next to Serial, Portnoy seems like an earnest failure. Not only is McFadden's cool point of view lost, but so are her satirical targets. Though Serial is set in the present-day San Francisco suburbs, it might as well unfold in '50s Dubuque. Most of the characters are whining, repressed squares who, at heart, disapprove of free sex, drugs, divorce and teenagers. For some reason, they are all trapped in Marin County against their will. When, after 90 long minutes, some of them flee, the film makers are overjoyed. Hero Martin Mull's retreat from an orgy to Wife Tuesday Weld is described in the same terms that Hollywood once used to celebrate the virtue of Doris Day.

Serial's only attempts at contemporaneity are buzz words and phrases of the '60s and '70s. Whenever possible, "mellow" or "hot tub" or "finding my space" are worked into the dialogue. Most of the major gags, however, betray the film's true sensibility by ridiculing big-breasted women and homosexuals. No actors or director could save this material. The cast and crew of Serial, largely recruited from television, do not even try.

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