THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, March 23, 1996 TAG: 9603220081
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E4 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Movie Review
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, MOVIE CRITIC
LENGTH: Medium: 77 lines
``GIRL 6'' IS as outrageous and as rambling as the telephone sex business it purports to satirize. It is, while being all over the place, unfocused at telling any story in particular.
Theresa Randle works hard and is quite stunning in her efforts to hold the film together as it wanders through varied characters and events. At the center of things is the title character, an aspiring actress who takes a telephone-sex job after most other avenues have been closed to her.
To her surprise, she is intrigued by the variety of ``acting'' she has to do to satisfy her callers, most of whom are male. If Joanne Woodward had a mere ``Three Faces of Eve'' to win an Oscar, Randle has the dozen voices of Girl 6 to play. It is quite an assignment.
In the course of the fantasies, she plays ``Carmen Jones'' (the famous role that got Dorothy Dandridge an Oscar nomination), ``Foxy Brown'' (of action-film lore) and even a parody of ``The Jeffersons'' (in which Spike Lee takes a part). As we said, the film is all over the place.
Lee seems to be aiming lower and more commercially with this small-scale offering. He's going for entertainment this time around, minus indictments of society in general. He can't help, though, throwing in pretentious sidetracks - such as equating Girl 6's fall into seduction to a small girl's fall down an elevator shaft. Frequent shots of that elevator shaft become obtrusive.
The relentless music of Prince (who prefers to be called ``the artist formerly known as Prince'') permeates the background - and threatens the foreground. With three new songs, the soundtrack album may well become a seller, but the music has nothing to do with what is happening on screen.
Jennifer Lewis, as usual, is wonderful. This time (after scoring as Tina Turner's mom in ``What's Love Got to Do With It''), she plays a tough but caring phone-sex madam - a woman who rules her girls with a firm but gentle hand.
Isaiah Washington plays Girl 6's hapless ex-husband - a man who should be doing better than shoplifting. The other man in her life is Jimmy, a neighbor played by Lee. Jimmy collects baseball cards and has nothing else going on in his life.
Cameo appearances, for no reason other than commercial ones, are contributed by Madonna, as a hardened phone-sex pro; Quentin Tarantino as an insensitive director who demands Girl 6 take off her clothes; and John Turturro, as an agent who rejects her.
One has the right to wonder, though, if the film doesn't use its tawdry setting as much, or more, than it satirizes it. In showing that Girl 6 is humiliated and depersonalized by being forced to appear topless, Lee has Randle appear topless. So is it effective to use nudity to criticize nudity, or is it, after all, just nudity? The question is a natural one.
Lee, momentarily, suggests that phone sex is an addiction comparable to drugs. That idea is then dropped.
In fact, many ideas are announced and then dropped.
``Girl 6'' is minor Spike Lee - produced, one suspects, as primarily a commercial competitor to allow him to try more important films.
The cast members are always outgoing and entertaining, but they have little dramatic force to present. This is a bit like a wandering and unfocused visit to the world of dirty talk. ILLUSTRATION: MOVIE REVIEW
``Girl 6''
Cast: Theresa Randle, Isaiah Washington, Spike Lee, Jenifer
Lewis, Debi Mazar, Madonna, John Turturro, Quentin Tarantino, Halle
Berry, Ron Silver
Director: Spike Lee
Screenplay: Suzan-Lori Parks
Music: Prince
MPAA rating: R (nudity, language)
Mal's rating: **
Locations: Greenbrier in Chesapeake; Janaf, Main Gate in
Norfolk; Kemps River, Lynnhaven 8, Pembroke in Virginia Beach
by CNB