Slaphappy

By R.C.

NIGHT SHIFT Directed by Ron Howard Screenplay by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel

Chuck Lumley (Henry Winkler) is a human fire hydrant for the mad dogs of Manhattan. Delivery boys smear mustard on his door jamb. Sex with his fiancee, a compulsive eater, is a quick kiss between bites of Mallomars. And his new partner on the night shift at the city morgue. Bill Blazejowski (Michael Keaton), is trouble: a pin wheel of sputtering ideas, a motormouth that roared. Out of desperation and a growing fondness for the girl next door (Shelley Long), Chuck devises a scheme that will make them all rich: he and Billy will act as "business agents" for a flock of unchaperoned prostitutes, and his office will become the best little morgue-house in New York.

No script co-authored by a man named Babaloo Mandel can be without its patches of agreeable whimsy. But Ron Howard, who has been acting in sitcoms (The Andy Griffith Show, Happy Days) for most of his 28 years, should know more about shaping comic characters, situations and moods than he shows here. Winkler, the Fonz on Happy Days, is pleasantly put-upon here; Michael Keaton, also from TV, is mildly manic; and Shelley Long so resembles Pam Dawber in her squeaky cuteness that one wonders why the producers didn't raid Mork and Mindy for the real thing. Sitcom humor, like water and sex, is something that is more enjoyable when it is free. --R.C.

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