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

DATE: SATURDAY, April 6, 1991                   TAG: 9104060451
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: E-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: HAL HINSON THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

`MARRYING MAN' LEADS RING FALSE

In "The Marrying Man," Kim Basinger approaches sexiness as if it were something akin to construction work. Something that requires a hard hat and heavy machinery.

Basinger plays Vicki Anderson, a curvaceous Vegas lounge singer who, just by walking onstage, puts the blowtorch to men's libidos. When she slouches in front of the mike, men's jaws drop to the floor the way men's jaws do in Tex Avery cartoons - with a clank.

While her charms may work like catnip for the characters on screen, it doesn't work for us. This is not an equipment problem; this is an acting problem. Basinger isn't naturally sexy on screen, the way that, say, Marilyn Monroe was as the slinky chanteuse in "Some Like It Hot"; she's strenuously sexy. In "The Marrying Man," when she slips into a negligee, she's slipping into her work clothes: movie history's first blue-collar sex kitten.

It may have been Monroe whom Neil Simon had in mind when he wrote the film's script, a clear attempt to recapture the spirit of the great '30s comedies.

The premise is pure screwball: It's the early '50s, and a multimillionaire playboy named Charley (Alec Baldwin) is six days away from marrying Adele (Elisabeth Shue), the daughter of one of Hollywood's most powerful studio executives. Charley wants to settle down, and he's so sure Adele is the right girl for him, he can't even go through the three-day orgy his bachelor pals have planned for him at a Vegas brothel. Before splitting, though, he agrees to have a final drink, and it's there, in the Lariat Room, that he first sees Vicki.

Adele or no Adele, he just has to have her. There's a problem, though - Vicki is Bugsy Siegel's girl. If Charley so much as breathes in her direction, it's likely to be the last breath he ever takes. But Charley is a man who's used to getting what he wants, and when Bugsy (Armand Assante) catches them in her bungalow, his wish comes true. He gets her all right - in a tommy-gun marriage ceremony.

For the rest of the movie, Charley and Vicki bicker, divorce, remarry, divorce. Four times they run this number, which is meant to demonstrate how crazy they are for each other. Mostly what it demonstrates is that Simon had one little idea from which he managed to wring four variations.

A different pair of stars might have gotten more mileage out of it. As on-screen lovers, Basinger and Baldwin are a bust. This may be somebody's idea of hot, but you can't cook with it.

Though Jerry Rees' direction is serviceably broad, he can't sand off the rough edges of his lead actors' talents. Both Paul Reiser and Fisher Stevens have their moments as Charley's Hollywood pals, and Assante is delicious as the mobster.

But the pleasures they provide are marginal. There's a flaw deep in the heart of this contraption. We get tired of the heavy lifting long before the job is done.

\ `MARRYING MAN' Playing at Tanglewood Mall (989-6165). Rated R.

by CNB