JUMPIN' JACK FLASH. Directed by Penny Marshall; written by Davld H. Franzoni, J.W. Melville, Patricia Irving and Christopher Thompson; produced by Lawrence Gordon and Joel Silver for Twentieth Century Fox. Starring Whoopie Goldberg. Rated R (language).
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What a gas, gas, gas this movie is! It's a bang-up comedy, first and foremost, but its spy thriller storyline is not without interest itself. And Goldberg is simply dazzling. Moviegoers who have only seen her in The Color Purple will be bowled over. Anyone who's seen her stand-up comedy, on the other hand, knows a little better what to expect.
Not all successful live comedians "translate" well into movies, though. In fact, it's downright rare. Why this should be true, I have no idea, although obviously stupid scripts and over-inflated egos might have a lot to do with it.
But Flash has no such difficulty. Goldberg's varied comic gifts—from impressions to creative profanity and slapstick—are in full flower. But they don't overwhelm the story. They mesh with it, almost always perfectly.
Terry (Goldberg) is a technicolor person trapped in a black and white world. While her soul longs for adventure and romance, her reality is an unheated apartment and a boring job as a bank computer operator. Her only creative outlet (other than dress, with which she is creative to a fault) is making friends, giving advice, trading recipes, etc. over the international computer network. Management puts up with such shenanigans because Terry's a whiz with machines and figures, but she still seems to be in hot water most of the time.
Someone, however, apparently appreciates her better qualities, at least as revealed through the computer net. Jack (he of the title) is a British spy stuck behind the Iron Curtain, who eavesdrops on some of her transmissions and asks her to help him get home.
The rest of the movie is an intriguing contrast between Terry's amateurish cloak-and-daggering about New York City and her periodic computer reports to Jack. Both kinds of scenes are equally entertaining. The computer dialogues sound gimmicky, but they're written so wittily and handled so well that they don't play like a gimmick at all.
It's impossible to tell from a simple plot outline how really good Flash is. The story is somewhat predictable and as silly as most spy stories. But what makes the movie are the sidebars, the embellishments. Terry brazening her way into a posh party, for example, by doing an unbelieveable Diana Ross. Later on, the bad guys get a hold of her, temporarily, and shoot her up with truth serum. After she escapes, she wanders around Manhattan for the next couple of hours telling everyone she meets exactly what she thinks.
Flash is a one-woman show. There are only a few brief scenes with Terry not present. But her supporting cast is excellent, creating an interesting and entertaining chorus of menace or hilarity (as the plot requires) to surround the star. Carol Kane deserves special mention as a wonderfully air-headed co-worker, a jewel of a comic character to rival her Simka from TV's "Taxi."
Don't see Flash if you don't like Goldberg's comic style. Or if you're sensitive to vulgar language. Goldberg's vocabulary is a lot like Eddie Murphy's, although not quite so constantly off-color. Some viewers, though, would agree with a police detective who threatens to wash Terry's mouth with a wire brush.
But if you're not put off by the vulgarity, you'll love the comedy of Jumpin' Jack Flash.
October 22, 1986