Cinema: Memory Lane

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Mister Buddwing fritters away nearly two hours helping James Garner to identify himself. His name isn't really Buddwing. But soon after he wakes up in Central Park with a blank past, he shoots significant glances at a Budweiser truck (Budd) and a jet plane (wing). Easy. Thus begins, again, the old amnesia plot. Remember? This time around, forget it.

Jean Simmons as a drunken socialite, Suzanne Pleshette as a beddable actress and Angela Lansbury as a goodhearted chippy are among the memory prodders Garner encounters before he learns for sure that he is not a dangerous escaped lunatic being sought by the police. He is something much worse: a serious composer who has Sold Out to make tubs of money with a record company, only to find that the price of success is marital unrest in Mount Kisco.

Now and then the real composer stands up to pound out a refrain on the piano. "It's the slow movement from my jazz octet," Garner muses vaguely, although by the set of his shoulders he looks more like a split end hating himself for goofing a touchdown pass. Anyway, music distracts him from the dialogue, which runs to such sturdy old chestnuts as: "There are names for women like you," and raises the suspicion that the real escaped mental case has holed up somewhere and begun churning out scenarios about amnesia.