Over Easy

By RICHARD CORLISS

CONTINENTAL DIVIDE Directed by Michael Apted Screenplay by Lawrence Kasdan

"Movies should have a beginning, a middle and an end," harrumphed French Film Maker Georges Franju at a symposium some years back. "Certainly," replied Jean-Luc Godard. "But not necessarily in that order." In the past two decades, movies have gone Godard's way: end up. Even in Hollywood, structure is now a word you are apt to hear only from Bel Air real estate agents. Adventurous directors snapped the straight spine of traditional drama into a series of vertebral vignettes. The standard comedy structure, which had kept stage and screen humming from Labiche to Lubitsch, gave way to anthologies of slapstick punctuated by expletives. The story became so much dead air between explosions of pain and laughter. And so the question arises: Does anyone in movies still care about structure?

Lawrence Kasdan does, with a vengeance. Like John Sayles (Alligator, Return of the Secaucus 7), Kasdan proposes a return to basics in screenplays: clean narrative lines, understandable characters, tantalizing plot precipices. His scripts live comfortably within the conventions of their genres: sci-fi intrigue in The Empire Strikes Back, Saturday-matinee thrills in Raiders of the Lost Ark, the steamy crime story in Body Heat. All these films were made with George Lucas or Steven Spielberg; now Spielberg serves as an executive producer of the script, written in 1977, that brought Kasdan to his attention. Continental Divide may be the most reductive of his screenplays, but in reviving the romantic-comedy format of the '30s, it offers lessons to the student of structure--and pleasure to any moviegoer out for a good time.

There must be an attraction of opposites: Ernie Souchak (John Belushi), a pudgy, wily, chain-smoking columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, and Nell Porter (Blair Brown), a Boston Brahmin working alone in her Rocky Mountain aerie to save the American bald eagle. They must "meet cute": assigned to write a story on the Bird Woman of Wyoming, Souchak climbs the mountain at risk of life and lung, falls asleep in Nell's cabin and is poked awake by her. They must reverse roles: he cooks goulash while she overpowers a pair of hunters. They must adapt their skills to the new environment: Souchak defends himself against a mountain lion by calling on his street smarts. They must fall in love, part, reunite: they do. And then Kasdan must resolve the romance and still allow the characters to go their own way: does he ever.

Kasdan's dialogue sometimes scans to sitcom rhythms. Transitions between sequences are too often punch lines to jokes played on the characters and the audience. But there are good sitcoms and bad, and Continental Divide is superior. John Belushi has dispensed with his randy Neanderthal persona to play that most hallowed of Hollywood leading-man roles: the extraordinary ordinary guy. Blair Brown is an earthy aristocrat and a resourceful actress: her face puffs and blotches beautifully when Nell's emotions demand it. If they are not quite Tracy and Hepburn, they will do until the real thing comes along--on the Late Show, in Woman of the Year or Pat and Mike, models for Kasdan's artful updating. His script, and the movie, improve as they progress, and the ending is especially satisfying--Kasdan's signature on this valentine to an old movie genre. Georges Franju would be pleased. --By Richard Corliss

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