Cinema: An Angel in Distress

SOMEBODY KILLED HER HUSBAND

Directed by Lamont Johnson; Screenplay by Reginald Rose

Millions of posters and magazine covers later, it is still a kick to look at Farrah Fawcett-Majors. She is not the most beautiful woman in show business, or by any means the sexiest, but her well-scrubbed cheerleader's features remain fresh and even invigorating. Whether by accident or design, she has become one of America's last old-fashioned dream girls: pretty, yet down to earth; inviting, yet wholesome. When she flashes her Cinemascope smile, men do not feel lust so much as nostalgia. Like the blonde in the T-bird in American Graffiti, Farrah Fawcett-Majors is the girl that every boy chased after in high school but could never quite find.

She is not, however, an actress. As any viewer of Charlie's Angels well knows, Fawcett-Majors gets into serious trouble every time she opens her mouth to speak. Giggling and shrieking fits aside, her voice is flat and expressionless; her face cannot convey any emotion other than blissful self-absorption. In Somebody Killed Her Husband, her debut as a movie star, Fawcett-Majors does not expand her range —only her wardrobe. This film proves that she can look just as swell fully dressed as she did in the scanty outfits of her hit ABC series.

Even so, it's doubtful whether a top-flight comedienne—say Goldie Hawn or Diane Keaton—could have rescued Husband's utterly incredible script. In the first scene, we are asked to believe that a wealthy New York housewife (Fawcett-Majors) would fall instantly in love with a shleppy Macy's salesman (Jeff Bridges) she spots across a crowded store. Minutes later, the heroine decides to abandon her husband for this nearly complete stranger — only to discover that Hubby has just been murdered. Rather than call the police, she and her new boyfriend set out to solve the case themselves. What follows is a series of progressively more improbable events. To buy this film's plot, it isn't enough to suspend disbelief; you have to submit to a lobotomy.

With a bit more wit, the production might have been able to distract the audience from some of its narrative in congruities; that's what Colin Higgins did for much of the time in his not dissimilar Foul Play. But Screenwriter Reginald Rose, best known for TV's Twelve Angry Men and The Defenders, is not Mr. Light Touch. The film's only flair comes from Director Lamont Johnson, who tries to force-feed sophistication into the proceedings. Johnson has shot the film at a fast pace in romantic Manhattan locations, and he has recruited outstanding stage actors, notably John Wood and John Glover, for the secondary roles. He provides at least the illusion of slickness.

Unfortunately, the director has been less successful with his leading man. Though Johnson and Bridges worked triumphantly together in The Last American Hero, the actor loses control here. He works so hard at being winsome that he inadvertently parodies Richard Dreyfuss's performance in The Goodbye Girl. Maybe Bridges is overacting to compensate for his co-star's nonacting, but, in this case, discretion clearly would have been the better part of valor.

F.R.