Cinema: Ghoul's Delight

SIX WEEKS Directed by Tony Bill Screenplay by David Seltzer

Before we go on, a swig of Maalox is indicated. Designed to touch the heart, Six Weeks is a ghoul's delight that collides with the stomach instead.

Ready? A California state assemblyman (Dudley Moore) is running for Congress. On his way to a fund raiser, he becomes lost and is given directions by a waif on the road, one of those annoyingly precocious children beloved by bad scriptwriters. He invites the girl (Katherine Healy) to the party, and it turns out that she is not a waif at all but the daughter of America's cosmetics queen (Mary Tyler Moore). The mother makes him an offer. If he gives her twelve-year-old, who has developed a crush on him, a meaningful role in his campaign, she will make a big contribution. He is soon persuaded: the girl is dying of leukemia and has only a few—guess how many—weeks to live.

From this low, the incredible script sinks to lower and lowest. What the girl really wants is for someone to comfort Mama when she is gone. Although the candidate is happily married with a son of his own, he becomes a surrogate father and husband for the remainder of the dying girl's days. He accompanies mother and daughter on a Christmas holiday outing to New York, takes them for a carriage ride through a snowy Central Park and even manages to get the girl a role in the New York City Ballet's annual production of The Nutcracker.

In one of the most tasteless scenes of the film, she unites the two adults in mock marriage. "We agree to be married for now because there is now always," she intones. "We will remember this pledge until we can no longer remember." Such lines are hard to forget, however, and although the performances are as credible as the script allows, the only moral of this crass and manipulative movie seems to be that even two Moores can add up to very little. —By Gerald Clarke