THE ROAD TOO WELL TRAVELED

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

Singapore: Raffles Hotel, early 1942. The colonial swells are having a party--black ties, a ricky-ticky dance band lulling them with torpid tunes. As they swill their bubbly, they mutter contempt for the advancing Japanese army in smug racist terms.

Don't these folks know they're fox-trotting on the edge of a volcano? No, of course not. They never do. But we do. We've been partying with their heedless ilk on the eve of disaster since we started going to the movies. We know that when the pretty girl and the handsome lad start moonily planning their future, the crump-crump-crump of an artillery barrage is but a moment away.

We also know that we are in for a very long day's journey on writer-director Bruce Beresford's endlessly predictable Paradise Road. Do we know that the ship carrying the women and children to safety as Singapore surrenders will be sunk, Red Cross markings or not? Can we predict that the well-spoken Japanese officer some of the survivors meet when they stumble ashore on Sumatra will turn out to be a sadist? When the commandant of the camp where they're interned appears, are we not instantly certain he studied penology with Colonel Saito over on the River Kwai?

And we're just getting started. We have much familiar hardship and vile torment to go. Not to mention the inevitable triumph of the human spirit. One day Adrienne Pargiter (Glenn Close) and Margaret Drummond (Pauline Collins) get to humming the theme from a symphony. The former once studied music seriously; the latter is a missionary who knows how inspiring a good tune can be when you're in the dumps. Or trying to survive in one. Soon enough the prisoners form a symphonic chorus, which sings wordless versions of great orchestral works. Even the more selfish and cynical prisoners--among them recent Academy Award winner Frances McDormand, rather miscast as a Viennese Jewish doctor--register awe and wonder at this feat.

We are assured that this all really happened. Survivors have imparted their memories to Beresford. The vocal arrangements they made still exist and are used in the movie. But in shaping their tale for the screen, shouldn't he have honored their courage--and, yes, inventiveness--with something other than cliches?

--By Richard Schickel