# Scenes from a Mall (1991)

### reviewed by
Mark R. Leeper

                                  SCENES FROM A MALL
                           A film review by Mark R. Leeper
                            Copyright 1991 Mark R. Leeper

              Capsule review:  If you think it is funny to see adults
         argue in public, perhaps this comedy is for you.  Then again,
         if you do think so, who knows what else you would like?
         Another Beverly Hills comedy that makes this Easterner wonder
         if he is missing the point.  Rating: -1 (-4 to +4).

Somebody once told me they thought they could listen to and watch Woody Allen reading white pages out of the phone book and it would be funny. His facial expressions are just so funny that anything he does is just naturally hilarious. Bette Midler can also be very funny. So the question is, how long can this couple play a loving and quarreling couple walking around a mall and still carry the film on their innate cuteness. Well, based on the results in Paul Mazursky's SCENES FROM A MALL, the two of them might be able to carry the premise for up to about ten minutes. After that, they definitely need an assist from a script and the script in SCENES FROM A MALL by Roger Simon and director Mazursky does little to help. At least it does little unless you think that everything connected with Beverly Hills is really cute. If your idea of a good joke is seeing a line of cars with each driver talking on a cellular phone, perhaps you will enjoy this film, but I would bet you will find far more on-target and funny in L.A. STORY.

On their sixteenth wedding anniversary, lovey-dovey couple Nick (played by Woody Allen) and Deborah (played by Bette Midler) go to a mall on an errand. There they get into a fight over fidelity and decide to break up. They reconcile and decide they still love each other. They fight again and break up. Then they get together again. Can you figure the plot from that point on? Yes, I thought you could. All this fighting and loving is done in front of random strangers. That's what there is. It is a film with a beginning and a middle, but no end. It is just arbitrarily cut off at the end of a cycle. It would be one thing if these people were at least great conversationalists. But this is no MY DINNER WITH ANDRE. About all you learn from the conversation is that these are two very ordinary and superficial people. Do you really care where they got their roll-top desk and which of them is going to get it in the divorce settlement? I know I do not. You could easily save the admission price by going to your local mall and eavesdropping on the people there.

There are some things that Mazursky is more anxious to show us than others. We do get to see the names of a lot of stores at the mall, many of which--surprise! surprise!--are chains that you might find at your own local mall. How fortuitous for the financing of the film! Considerably less care is taken to show us what the characters are doing with their packages. At one point each has bought a complete change of clothes which they are wearing. No explanation is given for what happened to the clothes they had been wearing. I guess in Beverly Hills, everything you own is considered disposable.

If you genuinely find great humor in the awkward situation of seeing adults argue in public, this predominantly one-joke comedy might be for you. If not, it offers you surprisingly little considering the names involved. I give it a -1 on the -4 to +4 scale.

                                            Mark R. Leeper
                                            att!mtgzy!leeper
                                            leeper@mtgzy.att.com
    .

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