SCENES FROM A MALL. Directed by Paul Mazursky; written by Roger L. Simon and Paul Mazursky: produced by Paul Mazursky for Touchstone Pietures. Starring Woody Allen and Bette Midler. Rated R.
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Not too surprisingly, consummate New Yorker Woody Allen had never been in a fancy mall until he made this movie. But he is a skillful comedian, and his character seems right at home there.
His co-star probably had to work less hard at appearing trendy and cool, and she's as successful as expected. And, as we would also expect, the comic team of Allen and Midler is really a good one. In fact, they re at least as good as some duos who in the past were together for years, making scores of movies.
Are we seeing the beginning of a new tradition here?
Probably not. In the first place, each of this pair has very wide-ranging interests and presumably would be too busy. And second, Scenes probably won't do well enough to encourage a sequel, in spite of its heavyweight—and considerably talented—stars.
It's a pleasant enough picture, with a clever, original premise and a glass elevator-full of on-target yuppie satire. But it's a movie of chuckles, warmly funny to be sure, but producing no real hilarity. And once it's explored its odd main idea—playing out a personal relationships trauma in front of a mall-full of fellow shoppers—there's not much else to the movie.
Nick (Allen) and Deborah (Midler) are an upper-up-scale professional couple marking their 16th anniversary. He's a lawyer specializing in athlete endorsements, she's a psychotherapist with a new book out about revitalizing marriages.
They go to a swank mall (supposedly the Beverly Center in L.A., but the interiors were filmed in Connecticut!) to pick up party supplies and generally pursue that peculiar American recreation of spending money.
The situation seems so pleasant that Nick feels it's the perfect time to confess to an affair he's been having. This simple action brings all kinds of long-suppressed resentments and other strong feelings out into the mall-light. But the tone of the movie is so upbeat that we know a permanent break-up just isn't in the cards for Nick and Deborah. Just some prolonged dirty-linen display in a very public arena.
March 6, 1991