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

DATE: TUESDAY, November 9, 1993                   TAG: 9311090068
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: C7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: PETER RAINER LOS ANGELES TIMES
DATELINE: HOLLYWOOD                                 LENGTH: Short

'TALKING' ISN'T A TOTAL LOSS

"Look Who's Talking Now" is an early November release but it's all about Christmas cheer. As a pre-emptive strike on the Christmas movie trade, it's cheerily inconsequential. In this third in the series of "Look Who's Talking" movies, it's the dogs' turn to talk. What's next? Will David Lynch take over the series and make the sofas and the garbage disposals talk?

John Travolta and Kirstie Alley re-team as James and Mollie, the couple with two twinkly kids, Mikey (David Gallagher) and Julia (Tabitha Lupien), who acquire two pooches - the scruffy Rocks (voice by Danny DeVito) and the effete poodle Daphne (voice by Diane Keaton). James is now a well-paid pilot for the curvy president (Lysette Anthony) of an international cosmetics firm; Mollie works as an elf for a department-store Santa.

Mollie can't stand the family's new dogs, one of which, Daphne, was a present from the cosmetics prez. The dialogue between Rocks and Daphne is deliberately corny "Lady and the Tramp" stuff, but it beats most of the adult dialogue. (DeVito's vocal cords are so gratingly distinctive that, after a while, you just think of Rocks as DeVito, not as DeVito's voice.) Despite the new wrinkle of the talking-dog gimmick, the whole enterprise is a continuation of the mood of the first two films in the series: It's all about the joys of family.

The reason that the film is borderline pleasant is because, even more than in the first two films, Travolta and Alley are a marvelous team. \

LOOK WHO'S TALKING NOW, A TriStar pictures release playing at the Salem Valley 8. Rated PG-13 for off-color dialogue.

by CNB