by Hadley Hury
Debbie Reynolds' heyday came as an American Sweetheart screen ingenue during the 1950s from musicals like Singing in the Rain (1952) and Hit the Deck (1955) through Tammy and the Bachelor (1957) and a scattering of light-sophisticated "bedroom" comedies (as they were then coyly called). For 10 or 12 years, she was an enormously popular star. (She even attained the single-name status reserved for only the upper echelon of the Hollywood pantheon for millions of moviegoers she was, simply, Debbie.) Audiences believed her to be in person the persona that came through onscreen a hardworking trouper who was tough but not hard, genuinely warm and kind, irrepressible in a non-sappy, down-to-earth way, wanting to entertain and to please, funny, ready for a laugh even if at her own expense.
Many of us baby-boomers who were a bit too young to get to know Debbie as the girl next door, and who came into the hyper-critical, unforgiving snideness of adolescence during the '60s may remember her with more dismissive irony. We knew her as the lipsticked, pencil-browed, Hollywood incarnation of The Singing Nun. Although Deb copped a Oscar nomination in 1964 for a sort of last-hurrah performance in The Unsinkable Molly Brown, the slow and painful death of the big studio musicals during the '60s took Debbie's career down, too (along with peers such as Jane Powell, June Allyson, Cyd Charisse, and even, to a degree, Julie Andrews).
Well, after nearly three decades, Debbie's back and even doubting baby-boomers may find it a surprisingly welcome occasion.
Of course, some of the response to Albert Brooks' wry new comedy Mother is attributable to the frequently funny screenplay and the fact that the issues the movie raises (however comically) about adult children and their parents have real resonance for many of us. But there can be no denying that Reynolds' comeback has evoked wellsprings of goodwill. There's a palpable level of audience enjoyment that indicates her return to the screen is a case of people not realizing how much they've missed something until they've found it again.
It's not just about sentiment, it's about delivering the goods. Reynolds plays Beatrice Henderson, widowed mother of John (Brooks), a fortyish science-fiction writer, and Jeff (Rob Morrow), a successful sports agent. On the occasion of his second divorce and experiencing severe writer's block John decides that he is never going to be able to figure out his pattern of failed relationships with women until he comes to grips with the problematic one he has always had with his mother. (Specifically, he wants to understand the roots of his mother's coolness toward him, her polite but unmistakable disapproval, her apparent preference for his kid brother.) His "bold experiment" involves moving back in with Beatrice, into the home he'd grown up in. He is determined that they get to know one another.
They do, and it is the slam-dunk revelation at the end of the film that is the weakness in Brooks' and frequent collaborator Monica Johnson's screenplay it's oversimplified and extremely pat. But if the attempted seriousness of the wrap-up is frustratingly lame, we realize after viewing the film that, indeed, Mother does have some thought-provoking heft. It's just that most of it (the best of it) arrives as a laugh, dressed in Brooks' and Johnson's characteristically skillful sense of the telling comic detail.
The central role of Beatrice practically begs to be misplayed. Taken too far toward light comedy, she would be an insubstantial ditz; too heavy, and she would be a truly psychotic bitch and bring down the movie's freshly skewed entertainment values like a house of cards. Beatrice is a capacious, juicy opportunity for a mature actor, and the temptations for going off and eating scenery in any number of different directions must have been powerful especially for an actor who hasn't had a shot in nearly 30 years.
Debbie Reynolds inhabits her with a fine ambivalence even more perfectly pitched, one senses at times, than what she was given in the screenplay. She finds a poignancy in Beatrice's aloofness and a survivor's strength in her selective vagueness and self-effacing humor. The result is never less than entertaining and frequently much more than that. It's a performance of seemingly effortless skill and terrific charm. It's also intelligent and not without risk-taking. (Brooks has a penchant for long-fused comic scenes. Some go slack; they're like shaggy-dogs that don't hunt. Others, at their best, recall the great George Stevens' insistence on the rhythm of real-life humor the pay-offs can be great, but they're very subtle riffs which demand much of the actors.) At times, Reynolds' scenes take on a quiet exhilaration this is a true master's comic timing at work in harness with a very appealing instinct for giving people pleasure.
It may come as something as a shock to remember (or to learn for the first time) that little Debbie Reynolds former girl next door, orphan of the musical movie form, unlucky with marriages, hard-working survivor of club acts, Vegas, and bus-and-truck tours is one of those rare movie stars whose truest life seems to happen for the camera. The camera is drawn by her and her face opens for it like a flower for the sun.
There comes a moment near the end of the film in which the attractive 64-year-old former ingenue, standing alone in the middle distance, center of the frame, smiles and waves. It packs a terrific wallop of missed opportunity. Long before now, some smart directors should have made a point of finding roles for this gal whose great love affair in life is with an audience and through the lens of a camera.
Let's hope the new projects that Mother is generating are worthy of Our Debbie. Here's looking at you, kid a has-been no more. Maybe your third act will make up for that long second one we missed.
ACTUALLY, REYNOLDS' NEXT-UP co-star,
Kevin Kline, should be hoping harder than anyone that their soon-to-be-released
project In and Out is a worthy one.
After Fierce Creatures, he really needs one.
Purportedly a sequel to the farcical A Fish Called Wanda, a surprise hit of 1988, Fierce Creatures is, unlike its prototype, only intermittently funny even though some of the fine cast from Wanda are back: Kline, John Cleese, and Michael Palin. (Jamie Lee Curtis is back, too.)
The never-you-mind plot has to do with a business mogul whose overweening interest in the bottom line of his latest acquisition a zoo results in some outrageous marketing strategies and other sillinesses.
It's not nearly silly enough. The script wouldn't support a decent Saturday Night Live sketch, and Kline resorts to some egregious mugging. Fierce Creatures even begins with a rather forlorn, belabored weariness as if hopelessly lodged in the shadow of its predecessor and, except for a few moments of odd hilarity from Cleese, never takes off.