Brenda Starr Reviews

Caught up in legal problems since its production in 1986, BRENDA STAR finally achieved negligible release in early 1992, and the only surprise about the fact that it had spent six years on the shelf is the fact that it didn't remain there. The herky-jerky plot makes the fatal mistake of proceeding from the idea that its protagonist is fictional, hardly a good idea when attempting to convince an audience to believe in a comics-derived character. The movie is based on the popular strip by Dale Messick, who in this screenplay has left the daily drawing work to young artist Mike Randall (Tony Peck). He's getting sick of this job and says so out loud during one stint at his easel--but he then gets the startle of his life when Brenda (Brooke Shields) interrupts his work to chastise him for his bad attitude. Viewers are then plunged into Brenda's world, where she always goes the extra mile to get a story, even if it involves being taken hostage by the crooks she's covering. This inspires the anger of Libby "Lips" Lipscomb (Diana Scarwid), her chief rival. Soon Brenda's onto the story of her career, that of a Nazi scientist who has developed an amazing new fuel and is hiding out in the Amazonian jungle. In the course of pursuing the doctor and her story, she runs afoul of the viciously competitive Libby, as well as a pair of inept Russian spies, Vladimir (Jeffrey Tambor) and Luba (June Gable). To complicate matters, Mike has willed himself into Brenda's world to try to lure her back to the strip she's abandoned, and begins to fall in love with her. Meanwhile, Brenda's fallen for a mysterious, handsome, eye-patched hero, Basil St. John (Timothy Dalton), who turns up to rescue her from tight situations. Another facile attempt to bring a four-color character to the big screen, BRENDA STARR joins such recent flops as CAPTAIN AMERICA and THE PUNISHER in hammering another nail into the genre's crowded coffin. The screenplay is a total mess, trying to maintain a comic-strip feel while also poking fun at the conventions of the form, and Robert Ellis Miller's direction is strained in its attempts at comedy and simply inept in the action scenes. A sequence in which Brenda escapes from the Russians and precipitates a melee in a market square looks like it was assembled from outtakes left over after the good angles were used; in another priceless moment, Brenda and company are about to be thrown from a boat into a piranha-infested river, and escape by jumping off the other side! Technically the movie's okay, but all those years spent dormant haven't done much for the usually great Freddie Francis photography; some of the shots are as washed out and discolored as an old high-school science film. The acting is pretty shabby as well. Shields (THE BLUE LAGOON, ENDLESS LOVE) is gorgeous but has a hard time displaying either dramatic or comic range, while Dalton (THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS, LICENCE TO KILL) looks like he's desperately waiting for that call from Cubby Broccoli. And poor Scarwid (INSIDE MOVES, SILKWOOD), who's done fine work in the past, is forced to play Libby as stiffly and abrasively as possible, perhaps explaining why she hasn't done any significant work since making this film. But at least she gets off easier than most of the other supporting female characters (including Kathleen Wilhoite as another reporter, Hank O'Hare), who are made to look unaccountably butch. In particular, Gable's Russian villainess looks startlingly like Monique Mercure in NAKED LUNCH--and she at least had the excuse of really being Roy Scheider. (Violence, adult situations.)