Frankie and Johnny Reviews

Garry Marshall, the former TV tycoon whose creations include "Laverne and Shirley" and "Mork and Mindy," is on familiar ground with FRANKIE AND JOHNNY, an urban blue-collar romance adapted from Terrence McNally's acclaimed two-character play Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune. Johnny (Al Pacino) is perhaps the only convict ever to emerge from the prison system a more sensitive person than when he went in. During an 18-month sentence in Altoona for check forgery, he has become a devoted reader of the works of Shakespeare as well as a master cook. As the story begins Frankie (Michelle Pfeiffer), who hails from Altoona, has returned home to attend the christening of her sister's new baby. Both head for New York City, he in search of work and she returning to her survival job as a waitress at a coffee shop presided over by gruff-but-kindly Nick (Hector Elizondo). As fate and the contrivance of McNally, who adapted his hit Off-Broadway play for the screen, would have it, Johnny winds up at the same place, where Nick hires him on the spot in spite of his prison record because he has a "good face." Alone in the city, Johnny seeks solace, first with a prostitute, with whom he pointedly abstains from sex, then with Cora (Kate Nelligan), one of Frankie's fellow waitresses, with whom he doesn't. When Johnny and Cora don't "click," Johnny begins his pursuit of Frankie in earnest. Garry Marshall can be, and has been, accused of many faults as a director, but insincerity ain't one of them. True, FRANKIE AND JOHNNY sentimentalizes working in a diner--a dirty, dreary, dehumanizing business to anyone who has ever done it--much as Marshall sentimentalized prostitution in PRETTY WOMAN. But the sincerity comes, in both films, from the characters' ability to rise above their circumstances to find love and a measure of happiness. In this romantic comedy, much more so than in PRETTY WOMAN, Marshall adds a poignancy to his lovers' quest by showing the price of failure in characters surrounding them, who either live with their loneliness or, worse, have settled for bad relationships out of need rather than love. It helps that Marshall has drawn sharp, effective performances from his leads. Pfeiffer balances her movie-star looks with the same steely grit and fiery spirit that has characterized her best work. Pacino, meanwhile, gives substance to Johnny's utterly selfless devotion to Frankie through his own selfless, devoted performance that, along the way, gives him a chance to show his too-little-seen flair for comedy. Along with the supporting cast, they tend at times to push the blue-collar buttons a little too stridently. However, the film never quite stumbles into condescension.