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

DATE: SATURDAY, February 26, 1994                   TAG: 9402260084
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: C8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: KEVIN THOMAS LOS ANGELES TIMES
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

THEY SHOULD CALL THIS ONE 'CAR 54, WHY ARE YOU?'

"Car 54, Where Are You?", based on the popular Joe E. Ross and Fred Gwynne TV series of the '60s, bombs on the big screen in the '90s. Thanks to a relentlessly terrible script by many hands, it's a dumb movie about dumb cops that should have remained on the shelf, where it's been sitting for over two years.

Gravel-voiced David Johansen stars as Gunther Toody, not exactly Brooklyn's finest, who gets a new partner in John C. McGinley's uptight, by-the-book Francis Muldoon after Leo Schnauzer (Al Lewis, from the original series) at last retires. Amid uninspired nonstop shenanigans - many loaded with heavy-handed sexual innuendo - there's a nominal plot concerning the nailing of a Mafia kingpin, played by Daniel Baldwin as a Robert De Niro impression. (In case we don't get this, Baldwin is actually required to refer to De Niro). Cop groupie Velma Velour (Fran Drescher) vamps the virginal Muldoon while Toody endures shrewish wife Lucille (Rosie O'Donnell).

These and others - including Nipsey Rusell, also from the TV series, as the precinct's none-too-swift captain - are game under Bill Fishman's energetic direction, but one and all are done in by the dire, dated material. To give credit where credit is due, the film, a seamless blend of Toronto and Brooklyn locales, has colorful settings, but their authenticity serves only to underline the production's synthetic quality. Wonderfully seedy Coney Island is too good a backdrop to waste on the film's frenzied finish.

\ Car 54, Where Are You?:

An Orion Pictures release showing at Towers Theatre. Rated PG-13 for language, sexual innuendo. 89 minutes.

by CNB