Cinema: Vow of Comedy

MASS APPEAL

Directed by Glenn Jordan

Screenplay by Bill C. Davis

Some priests have flocks; Father Tim Farley (Jack Lemmon) has fans. The 5:20 Mass is S.R.O. for this Johnny Carson in alb and chasuble, who keeps the customers satisfied with ingratiating patter—dinner and a show for the price of your soul. Off-pulpit, Father Farley is a bit of a sacramental wino but still relentlessly endearing, dodging attacks and responsibilities with an easy quip. Somewhere beneath the show-biz charm, though, compassion pulses. When an angry young seminarian (Zeljko Ivanek) antagonizes his rector (Charles Burning), Father Farley resolves to detoxify the lad's ardor, teach him a few punch lines, figure out where God fits into all this.

In his big serious roles, Lemmon often turns his best instincts upside down. His gestures seem stranded between media: too intimate for the stage, too ostentatiously cunning for the screen. His Emmett Kelly face sags under the weight of compromise, drains of life, wears anguish like a Distinguished Service Cross. These roles inevitably win Lemmon Oscar nominations (three in the past five years), but this time he might even deserve one. Father Farley is an ideal Lemmon subject: the entertainer at mid-life crisis, with all attendant weary routines and stutter-step timing, and a love-hate relationship with his audience and himself. Lemmon's trademarked excesses are part of the character; they play off Ivanek's imploding edginess in a generational combat of acting styles. Guess who wins in this expanded and affecting version of Bill C. Davis' 1981 Broadway comedy? The old soft-shoe salesman may be a little weak in liberation theology, but he does know how to work a room. —R.C.