Cinema: Poor Grownups

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RICH KIDS

Directed by Robert M. Young

Screenplay by Judith Ross

Though Rich Kids is a snappy title, it does not fit this fashionable, smart-talking New York comedy. The film's twelve-year-old hero and heroine, Jamie (Jeremy Levy) and Franny (Trini Alvarado), are rich all right, but Rich Kids has no interest in the vicissitudes of wealth. The movie is actually about the effect of divorce on children—an equally good subject, but one that deserves more justice than it receives here. As the cute but empty title indicates, Rich Kids would rather be glib than honest.

The film has some assets: attractive Upper West Side locations, a fine cast of New York stage actors and a smattering of clever lines. The basic premise is sound too: When School Chums Jamie and Franny get sick of their respective bickering parents, they run away to spend an illicit weekend acting out the fantasies of romance, something that is absent in their homes. While this plot offers plenty of opportunities for big laughs and emotional ironies, the film rarely mines them. Most of Rich Kids consists of mild scenes that sound better in principle than they play onscreen.

A major problem is that the adult characters are caricatures. Writer Judith Ross clearly wants to create the kind of people one finds in Woody Allen and Paul Mazursky films: well-intentioned, articulate neurotics whose comic behavior exposes their internal pain. Unfortunately, Ross has a tendency to sacrifice believability for broad gags. We are asked to accept, simply for farcical purposes, that Franny's otherwise bright parents (John Lithgow and Kathryn Walker) would pull an elaborate ruse to fool their child into thinking that their dead marriage is a happy one. Ross not only characterizes Jamie's father (Terry Kiser) as a desperately hip playboy, she must also give him a bachelor pad so overdone that even Hugh Hefner would find it garish. Jamie's mom (Roberta Maxwell), meanwhile, is required to go into a burlesque rage at the mere mention of her ex-husband's name. Ross shows far more respect for the kids, who are so truthfully drawn that they seem to have wandered in from another movie. Still, credible grownups are needed if Rich Kids' conflicts are to have any meaning.

Director Robert M. Young (Short Eyes) could have destroyed the film completely by accentuating the sitcom excesses of the screenplay. He avoided that error only to swing too far the other way: his erratic pacing often kills those jokes that are worthwhile. The final confrontation between the kids, their parents and the parents' lovers is an all too typical disaster. A potentially hilarious climax ends up looking like a chaotic dress rehearsal, just as this potentially powerful movie collapses under the wreckage of its confused intentions.—Frank Rich