Critics' Voices

By TIME''S REVIEWERS. Compiled by Georgia Harbison

MOVIES

THE GREAT MOUSE DETECTIVE. In this 1986 animated feature, now revived for a new generation, a mouse chanteuse performs the first tentative striptease in a Disney cartoon. Otherwise, there's not much momentous in this story of some adorable rodents and a peg-legged bat named Fidgit -- just some clever cartoonists having a holiday on mice.

MISSISSIPPI MASALA. Ethnic rancor in the deep South -- this time between a genial black businessman (Denzel Washington) and an Indian family emigrated from Africa. Director Mira Nair, who artfully depicted a boy's slum life in Salaam Bombay!, cannot make the human ambiguities compelling here. Characters - strike attitudes, not heartstrings, and seem stranded in a Mississippi mishmash.

TELEVISION

UNFORGETTABLE, WITH LOVE (PBS, March 7, 8 p.m. on most stations). For anyone who didn't get enough of Natalie Cole and her dad on the Grammys (anyone out there?), this Great Performances special, shot during her recent concert tour, should fill the bill.

THE POWERS THAT BE (NBC, debuting March 7, 8:30 p.m. EST). Norman Lear tries for a comeback (after last summer's abysmal Sunday Dinner) with a sitcom about a dim-witted Senator. John Forsythe is amusing as a Reaganesque legislator, but the satire and supporting characters (imperious wife, nervous press aide) are broader than the Potomac.

FISH POLICE (CBS, Fridays, 8:30 p.m. EST). Animated underwater shenanigans. Well, it's better than Capitol Critters.

THEATER

PRIVATE LIVES. It seemed impossible anything could erase the grim memory of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton mangling Noel Coward's comic souffle of marriage, but Joan Collins far outdoes them in ickiness in this overdressed, undertalented Broadway revival.

GRANDCHILD OF KINGS. Hal Prince proved himself a genius of high-gloss staging in such musical extravaganzas as Cabaret and The Phantom of the Opera. Now his awesome talents, and a cast of 27, are employed in an exuberant, emotionally rich yet intimate off-Broadway retelling of Sean O'Casey's Dublin memoirs.

MUSIC

JULUKA: AFRICAN LITANY and UBUHLE BEMVELO (Rhythm Safari). Juluka is Sipho Mchunu, who is a black African, and Johnny Clegg, who is white and an honorary member of the Zulu tribe. Together, Clegg and Mchunu have made some extraordinary music, mixing African rhythms with a contemporary beat and some pointedly political lyrics that manage to be both proud and conscience stricken. This is music that will move you and shake you.

GEORGE LEWIS: TRIOS & BANDS (American Music). New Orleans-born George Lewis became a cult figure for traditional jazz fans the world over and the model of dozens of clarinetists ranging from Woody Allen to Britain's Sammy Rimington and Japan's Ryoichi Kawai. Lewis died in 1968, but musicologist Bill Russell, 87, is keeping his message alive with the CD release of historic acetate recordings Russell made a half-century ago. (American Music, 1206 Decatur Street, New Orleans, La. 70116)

MONTEVERDI: VESPRO DELLA BEATA VERGINE, 1610 (Archiv Produktion). 2 CDs. The Vespers of 1610 is easily the most virtuosic, enthralling and glorious liturgical composition before Bach's Passions. John Eliot Gardiner leads a large and splendid assortment of soloists, choristers and instrumentalists in this kinetically irresistible and revelatory performance.

BOOKS

VOX by Nicholson Baker (Random House; $15). This novel masquerades as the transcript of a phone conversation between a man and a woman who have connected over an adult party line; beneath the talk runs a funny and sometimes chilling parable about relationships in the age of safe sex.

UNTO THE SONS by Gay Talese (Knopf; $25). It may be overwritten, but this lengthy memoir exhaustively, often vividly tells of the great wave of Italian immigration to the U.S., through the experiences of the author's ancestors. Imagine Roots dipped in marinara sauce.

ETCETERA

BIZET: THE PEARL FISHERS. Carmen it isn't, but an endearing minor opera, with a crazy plot and a thrilling tenor-baritone duet. It gets a rare production from the Opera Company of Philadelphia, starring award-winning tenor Martin Thompson. March 16, 20, 22.

FELD BALLETS/NY. Choreographer Eliot Feld is celebrating his 25th anniversary with an ambitious New York City season that includes five new works, among them Wolfgang Strategies, a tribute to Mozart. Through March 22.

FINAL PARALYSIS

Why does a beautiful woman carry a gun in FINAL ANALYSIS? Because "there are a lot of lunatics out there!" At least three of them are at large in this steamy Hitchcock knockoff -- mostly from Vertigo. A psychiatrist (Richard Gere, with his famous hair and casual sexual authority) blunders into toxic relationships with two wily sisters (Kim Basinger and Uma Thurman). Soon, despite her married bondage to creepy contractor Eric Roberts, Basinger takes Gere to bed. Their mandatory sex scene is shot in tiger stripes of light and shadow, as if it were an R-rated outtake from the Nature series. The four gorgeous leads aren't playing characters here; they are making erotic fashion statements. And Phil Joanou's direction is mannered to the max. Or, rather, to the min; the film is two hours of flexing jaws and sultry glances. Before delivering a line of dialogue, everybody takes a nap. All of which is about as arousing as watching a tortoise sun itself.