Cinema: Fizzled Farce

ONCE IN PARIS Directed and Written by Frank D. Gilroy

Uncloudable sunniness of mood is what is required to sit through this decorative but unsubstantial comedy without snarling. A viewer whose child, hitherto an incorrigible hubcap thief, had just won a full scholarship to Harvard might be in the proper frame of mind. Playwright Frank D. Gilroy (The Subject Was Roses) should have been able to manage something sturdier than this weak story, a trifle about a naive and virtuous American screenwriter—snickers begin here —who is called to Paris to rescue a bogged script....