
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, February 23, 1991                   TAG: 9102230386
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: E-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: CHRIS GLADDEN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

`SCENES FROM A MALL' AMUSING

Director Paul Mazursky's "Scenes from a Mall" seems incidental compared to last year's fierce, funny and resonant "Enemies: A Love Story," one of his all-time best efforts. In a way, it recalls the entertaining but smaller films of Woody Allen who co-stars in this Mazursky outing.

But Mazursky is a filmmaker with a consistently original point of view and he brings it to this comedy about a marriage struggling to survive the course of one tumultuous day.

In a way, it's a follow-up to Mazursky's "Down and Out in Beverly Hills," a continuing satire on well-to-do Southern Californians.

Allen plays Nick Fifer, a hard-charging sports lawyer. Bette Midler plays his wife, Deborah, a psychologist whose book on marital success has just hit the best-seller lists.

The movie begins on their 16th wedding anniversary. The apparently happy Fifers see their two children off on a ski trip and head for the local shopping mall to prepare for a party and buy each other anniversary gifts.

Overcome by guilt, Nick picks this completely inappropriate time and place to confess to a six-month affair and the battle begins.

The Fifers break up and make up over and over again as they charge through the issues and memories that have formed their years together. However, not even the prospect of a disintegrating marriage can stay them from binges of conspicuous consumption in the mall atmosphere. They go to the movies ("Salaam, Bombay!" in a typical Mazursky twist). They eat sushi and caviar and nachos and drink margaritas and champagne. They buy clothes. They bop each other with shocking revelations, recoiling and recovering and analyzing their actions amid the Christmas shopping madness of the mall.

Midler and Allen make the Fifers a kind of touching pair, confused about their motivations as well as the fact that their marriage managed to survive for 16 years. Deborah confesses she doesn't understand it despite her stature in the marriage counseling profession.

The structure of the movie is a little too symmetrical and convenient and the story has the air of an exercise in comedy rather than the true exploration of a relationship. But ultimately, this turns out to be an amusing and oddly tender comedy.

`Scenes from the Mall' 1/2 A Touchstone picture at Valley View Mall 6 (362-8219) and Salem Valley 8 (389-0444). Rated R for language and adult situations; 87 min.

by CNB