Cinema: Peachy Keen

CANNERY ROW Directed and Written by DavidS. Ward

This is the Depression as a dream — no breadlines, no sitdown strikes, no Dust Bowl. Cannery Row is visibly a movie set, splendidly designed by Rich ard MacDonald and photographed by Sven Nykvist a subtle shade away from the realistic. The burns and hookers who inhabit it are seen as sweet dreamers whose great preoccupation is bringing together Doc (Nick Nolte), a sometime baseball pitcher, and Suzy (Debra Winger), a reluctant "floozy" who talks tough but is as lost in fantasy as everyone else.

If the shabby cupids of Cannery Row knew anything about old movies, they'd know that two people who take such an instant dislike to each other are bound to end up together. They might have spared themselves much trouble that is not as funny and dear as David Ward, working from two John Steinbeck novels (the other is Sweet Thursday), thinks it is. Debra Winger is a tart tart and, as in Urban Cowboy, the best thing in a bad movie. But Ward, who wrote The Sting, seems to think that what they canned on Cannery Row was not fish but fruit. There is a peachy, syrupy quality to the film that first then chokes.

— By Richard Schickel